GI Joe: Resurrection
by Charlemagne
Summary: It's been thirteen years since Cobra's defeat at Cobra-la and the Joes have moved on to other lives but the return of old foes marked by the arising of new ones calls for old faces and new to stand against their evil threat.
1.

G.I. Joe: Resurrection  
  
Disclaimer: This is set in the G.I. Joe universe roughly now after the defeat of Cobra following the destruction of Cobra-La in G.I. the movie (don't get me started on G.I. DIC episodes) and the disbanding of the G.I. program. I don't own any of the G.I. Joes unless you mean the action figures in which I own many and I don't own any of the Cobras unless again you mean figures in which I say quite a few.   
  
Warning: This story contains a number of scenes of violence, language, and sexual situations and thus is rated R.  
  
July 4th, 2001  
  
The White House Lawn was in full force today for President Bush's speech regarding Anti-terrorism in the United States of America. The number of reporters whom had been invited to the speech was staggering and conversations were abuzz due to the rumors that the G.I. Joe program, which had been started under Kennedy but discontinued in the early term of President Clinton, was going to be revived. Already the advanced rumors had sparked a wave of controversy since the Joe program had been a massive military expense routinely called a waste of money, even during the height of the Cobra organization scare. With most of it's original members having been tried by the United Nations for war crimes or dead, the idea President Bush would hurt his already war tarnished image with more military spending on the most costly special missions division of all time was ridiculous.  
  
Yet the rumors continued.  
  
***  
  
Shana M. O'Hara, the woman formerly known as "Scarlett" watched the television with mild interest on her home couch. The news report that the G.I. Joe Program was going to be resumed brought a slight smile to her lips, but it quickly faded, Cobra was destroyed and the people they called "terrorists" these days were ranting buffoons or people one couldn't stop with the military. She momentarily checked her watch as she thought it was about time to go check to see if her two kids, Conrad and Dashiell, were ready to come home from school. They were named after the two best men she'd ever known and that had infuriated their father whom Scarlet was glad to have not seen in a significant amount of time. She briefly thought back to her relationships with two of her fellow Joes and mourned that time. Still time had passed and she'd drifted apart from them both and into a civilian life. Snake Eyes had disappeared from the face of the Earth with only the occasional letter post marked from everywhere from Argentina to the Himalayas. Duke was still career military and last she had heard was finally a full General.  
  
"Two thirty six." Scarlet winced as she looked at her watch and sighed as she got up, she was already late! It was a pity too because President Bush was already coming out to give his speech on terrorism.  
  
"My fellow Americans…" the Presidents voice echoed before he stopped in mid-sentence.  
  
***  
  
Destro frowned deeply as he was lead into the sunlight of the West Coast. The former second in command of Cobra had stopped trying to keep count of the years that had passed by while he was locked away in the icy Alaskan prison that had been prepared for him following his conviction before the United Nations.   
  
'Why of all times did they choose now to transfer me to something more hospitable I do not know.' Destro thought. The man in the metal mask and manacles had no illusions that he was ever going to be free again. Thanks to the bumbling of Cobra Commander and the idiocy of that genetic half-wit, Serpentor, the entire military arm of Cobra had been eliminated and enough had turned tail and run that any information Destro might have given to mitigate his sentence had already been given by some fool accountant or foot soldier. It was a grim consolation to see so many of his fellow soldiers of terror inside his grim snowy home and it pleased him to watch many either die of the cold or despair.  
  
"You'll be picked up here, Chrome-Dome, in a few minutes as soon as we get your partner." The peon prison guard who had been assigned to guard him inside this military base made a wonderful observation about his features that Destro hadn't heard a million times before by much more educated men.  
  
"DESTRO! What are you doing here?" the unmistakable sound of a European Beauty's voice was spoken behind him and the Scottish weapons-dealer turned to look upon his beautiful Baroness's face once more. She too was being guarded by an odious peasant but was struggling far more than dignity allowed Destro to do so. It was obvious that incarceration had not broken her fiery and frequently passionate spirit.  
  
Destro could not answer his lover's query because he himself didn't know. There was a certain sense of darkness to the air that Destro found most appealing. The thoughts and possibilities going through his head were interrupted by the sound of a helicopter descending that was full of heavily armed United States military soldiers. Leaving the cockpit once settled was a stunningly attractive young woman in her twenties wearing the uniform of a Lieutenant-Major. Destro instantly realized the truth of the situation and it was obvious by the Baroness's ceasing her struggling that she recognized it as well. The woman's walk was far too exaggerated and her uniform worn exactly appropriate to distract the guards dull witted lustful minds, especially since the look in her eye was that of a killer. It was a tactic Destro knew well and a classic plan(,) but would it work?  
  
"Lieutenant-Major Eve Caesarson here to pick up the prisoners." The woman spoke with a slight accent as she handed over a clipboard to the two officers and looked briefly at Destro and the Baroness. Destro nodded while the Baroness merely gave a half smirk before both of their guards fell backwards, a bullet hole put in both by the woman.  
  
"COBBBRAAAAAAAA!" one of the soldiers onboard the helicopter shouted as rockets fired from hidden chambers onboard and sailed into the side of the base. Destroying aircraft and runway. Destro noted that the fires were forming into a suspiciously familiar symbol….The Cobra Hood.  
  
"Onboard quickly!" The woman, who had introduced herself as Eve Caesarson, said in a British accent that he had not been able to detect before. Destro noted the irony of her name as well. What was a better alias than one which alluded to the first victim of snakes and the child of Cleopatra and the greatest conqueror the world has ever known? Whoever was in charge of this operation apparently at least had a classical education, which would be a pleasant change from the woefully undereducated lords he had served before.  
  
"You fool! You'll bring the entire United States military down upon us." The Baroness snarled her next words as the helicopter took off and the woman who was their rescuer merely smiled, letting her disguise loosen to reveal almost angelic features and long blonde hair.  
  
"You'll find the Commander is a bit more cautious than that, Your Ladyship." She said smiling. The side-door to the helicopter was then shut and an electrical current flew across it like lightning through a rod and the vehicle vanished in a cloaking field.  
  
***  
  
President George Bush Junior began his speech with an appeal to the brotherhood of his fellow Americans. It would take all the brotherhood he could get to make what he was announcing popular. War spending was an unpopular topic in America for obvious reasons. If you started spending large amount of money on defense, people naturally assumed you meant to take the country into battle. Unfortunately war occasionally had the nastiness to come to you.  
  
"My fellow Americans…" George took a deep breath as he ran his mind over the information the CIA and National Security Agency had both confirmed about a military build up of Cobra. The organization had been extinct for nearly ten years as far as the President of the United States had known with only the sovereign nation of Cobra Island remaining a tiny and harmless remnant of the once feared army of evil. Yet not only were they still in existence the reports indicated vast amounts of money, weaponry, and political support worldwide. The snakes had somehow managed to re-grow their tail after it was severed. George squinted as he noticed that the bright sunlight of the afternoon disappeared around him.  
  
"Mr. President get down!" one of the Secret Service Agents shouted to him as he fell behind the president's podium and heard the sound of gunfire echoing across the air. A plain metal canister landed nearby the president before it exploded in a cloud of green gas that was accompanied by a terrible battle cry.  
  
"COBBBRAAAAA!"   
  
George found himself going out before he looked to his side and saw one of his bodyguards dead beside him, having been shot in the head at point blank range. Red uniformed arms lifted him up as the President saw two members of the Crimson Guard of Cobra, their masks covering their faces and apparently protecting them from the gas. Everything then faded to darkness.  
  
***  
  
Shana saw only bits and pieces of the gunfire echoing across the White House Lawn before the television set went to static but it was enough for her to drop her coat and car keys to stare in horror.  
  
"Oh no." Scarlet gasped, watching the static begin to slowly fade away to a symbol recognized world wide as a mark of terror. The Cobra Hood set against a white background, the image of a snake with its' mouth poised to strike. The seal of the Cobra marked who was responsible.  
  
"Damn you!" Scarlet snarled, grabbing the television set off of the table it rested on, ripping it's chord from the wall, and slamming it full force into the floor. The set exploded into electrical sparks and tubes as Shana O'Hara took a deep breath and went to her kitchen phone to make a call.  
  
***  
  
General Hawk watched the Cobra Hood appear on his limo television set as he was adjusting his tie for the state dinner he was already going to be late to, scheduled for after the President's national address. The symbol of Cobra had always struck General Hawk as rather silly, it was one of the reason's he'd chosen his codename. A hawk naturally preyed on snakes and it was one of the proposals for the flag of the United States, a great bird preying on a snake. Clayton M. Albernathy had learned there was nothing silly about Cobra though as they had proven time and time again to be the most murderous evil band of raping, torturing, scum that had ever had the indecency to crawl out of a cesspool. As a General, Hawk had lost a lot of good friends and acquaintances fighting them and his units saw more action per man than most in the United States' history fighting them. If he had been a less controlled man he would have punched the television set in with his fist.  
  
"Driver! Forget the White House! We're heading directly to the Fort!" General Hawk said to the private they'd assigned to chauffer him around ever since they said he could no longer drive his own vehicle and look like a military commander. Grabbing the limousine phone, he began dialing Langley, Virginia. The audacity that those bastards would actually try and kidnap the president before two hundred million viewers shook the man but he'd seen far more insane actions from the group. Personally Hawk never had believed Cobra to be destroyed. As long as Cobra Island or any one remaining member of the organization survived under "diplomatic immunity" or "insufficient evidence" they were a threat. If he had his way he would have bombed the entire island back to the stone-age and seen to it the murderers got one for.  
  
Hawk pulled his phone from his ear as he heard an unfamiliar voice on the other side.  
  
"I'm sorry I cannot relay this to you in person, General Hawk, but I hope you will be content with the message I'm leaving you. Cobra has returned though not in the form you remember it but in a glorious Phoenix from the ashes of the monster it was to a guiding savior who will transform the world. I am saddened that you must die the way you are about to, for you truly do deserve a warrior's death for the courage and heroism you have shown battling my father's minions…" Hawk stopped listening to the man as he pounded on the glass in between him and his driver, noticing they were going the wrong way. Hawk put the phone to his head again "the world needs to be stunned long enough for battles to be won however. Au revoi, General."  
  
Hawk saw his driver disintegrate into a pile of gray disgusting ooze before his eyes. The Joe head spat the name of the creature "Synthoid.".  
  
The limousine doors then locked shut beside the General and the vehicle slammed itself off the road into the Ptomec with a splash. Water leaked through the doors and began to fill the compartment even as he slammed himself against the window with all his strength. The window, however, had been replaced with bulletproof glass and wouldn't budge.  
  
"Thank God I'm a paranoid old man." General Hawk said praying to God Cobra didn't have the brains to check under the seats. Running his hands underneath the water already up to his knees to grab a white package he'd ducked taped there months before, General Hawk pulled out a Blast-tech 7. The weapon was supposedly too expensive for normal usage but it was still the most powerful hand held weapon in the world.  
  
"YO JOE!" Hawk said firing the laser pistol three times into the passenger window, which exploded into a torrent of water. Taking a deep breath General Hawk climbed out the broken glass and swam upwards towards the surface.   
  
Blue laser bolts flew through the water around Hawk before he made a U-turn back into the depths. Cobra soldiers were on the shore waiting for him with their own laser armaments. The General's only hope was to get to a spot where they couldn't see him with the tide and hope they thought he drowned.  
  
***  
  
Cobra Command Station was one of the engineering marvels of the modern era as the space-platform was possessed of the most advanced weaponry on the planet, countless surface to orbit fighters and troop carriers, as well as being completely unknown to the rest of the world's population. The cloaking field developed around the fortress in the stars was just one of the keys to which the reborn organization would wreak it's vengeance on a world which had abandoned the principles on which it had been founded.  
  
"Sssssssssss." Snakes murmured as the giant fourteen foot long cobra sunk its' over-sized fangs into an ostrich egg and devoured the gooey insides hungrily. The creature like it's master was insatiable in its' appetites.  
  
The new Cobra Commander leaned back in the middle of the command chamber as his "pet" ate beside him. The room was full of video screens with every news agency on the planet and a number of private satellite feeds playing the news, which the Commander was pleased to watch, spread like a brushfire across the planet. He was not as old as the original commander had been and did not wear a mask to shroud any deformity or heritage from a now gratefully extinct subspecies of man. He was actually rather handsome with short well-trimmed blonde hair and almost chiseled features that had been hardened along with his body in years of service on Cobra's front lines. Metallic reinforced body-armor covered his chest and legs with the Cobra hood serving as an honor shield that bound a blue cape around his body at the shoulder. Disturbingly the man's eyes were completely black with gold irises and gave the man a decidedly alien look, but that was from surgery to replace damaged retinas not because he shared blood with the creature at his side.  
  
"It's beautiful isn't it Snakes? The chaos of lost leadership, assassinated warriors, and destroyed economies allowing us to rescue our comrades in arms as we prepare to bring the heavy gauntlet of Cobra forth to punish those who repressed us. I feel pity for those whose families shall miss members because of the necessity of our actions, but it is as Machiavelli wrote that families shall forgive lost parents and brothers if they are rewarded with peace, prosperity, and property." The Commander smiled before Snakes turned his head from his half-eaten egg to look at the man. The creature raised his hood upwards before it turned its' head again from the Commander to look at the doorway which was opening to reveal Fallen Angel, the head of the Crimson Guard, and those she was sent to recover. The Scottish Arms dealer Destro and the Baroness Decobray were long ago friends of Cobra, time would tell if they would be again.  
  
"Cobra Commander I have brought Destro and the Baroness as you requested." Fallen Angel said as she crossed her arms, it was obvious that whatever had passed between the ruthless but lovely woman and the two had made her more than a little skeptical of her Commander's desire to speak with them and perhaps restore their positions.  
  
"So you are the one responsible for our liberty." Destro said with a slight hint of disdain, the records and the new Cobra Commander's own personal observations spoke volumes of the metal masked warlock's contempt for every leader of Cobra but himself. The Baroness would be more practical as always, she was interested only in her own personal vendettas and would side with anyone who could help her fill them. In that way she was easier to control than Destro but was less respected by the Commander.  
  
"Thank you, Angel, I appreciate your efficiency as always. Do me the courtesy of supervising the remainder of the operations planet-side. This will be the first live fire operation for many of our troops and I would feel more secure knowing that they have your gentle touch to guide them." The Commander said squeezing his snakeskin glove covered fist. He let a half smile as Fallen Angel frowned and bowed her head, the Ukrainian woman was an excellent soldier but it was obvious she hated leaving her superior alone with such treacherous beings. It was a loyalty the Commander appreciated and wondered if it had something to do with more personal feelings.  
  
"As you wish Cobra Commander." Fallen Angel said, the woman walked out the door in strict military fashion.  
  
It was obvious the Baroness and Destro were taking their measure of him and it would require more than merely removing them from the hands of incompetent unsuspecting guards to prove that he was capable of leading the organization that would eventually rule the world and bring order to the planet. The Baroness was about to say something derogatory to him but Snakes hissed in her direction and the giant cobra actually drove her back for a moment.  
  
"Ah at last we have the great Destro and Baroness before us Snakes. What do you think we should do with them my dear father?" The new Cobra Commander smiled and petted the hood of the serpent lightly, careful not to disturb his mentor's state of mind.  
  
"You should dessstroy them as the traitorssss they are my sson! It wasss a mistake to bring them here! Kill them!" Snakes shouted as the words had the intended effect on Destro and the Baroness, they were completely stunned by the most familiar voice.  
  
"Cobra Commander!" The Baroness shouted and the new leader of Cobra was certain that if she had a gun she would have killed the serpent were he was.  
  
"It's impossible!" Destro backed away in shock from the snake.  
  
"Yesssss! I was not dessstroyed so easily as you might have thought! Sstripped of my manhood and reduced to crawling on my belly like a common beassst I found my way back to thosssse who ssstil remembered my greatnesss! Now I ssssstand as the one with the power and will take my revenge on you and all thossse who left me to rot in Cobra-la! As a snake!" Snakes lifted up with a gigantic hiss and opened his mouth to bite down his poison on Destro and the Baroness. The speed and amount of venom inside him was surely going to kill them both.  
  
"Patience, Father. It has been many years since your humiliation and Cobra though stronger now that it has ever been before is still far from victory. We require men and women of vision in this time and both of your former comrades are possessed of that attribute in abundance." The new Commander said in a soft voice, it was going against every one of his instincts to not allow his father the rightful pound of flesh that he deserved for the horrific inhuman fate they had done nothing to stop. However while Cobra had plenty of warriors it was greatly lacking tacticians, economists, and leaders in this age. Things they would need once the old order was swept away and the traitors were killed.  
  
"PATIENCE! I've had nothing but patience waiting for thisss day! I've waited PATIENTLY assssss your geneticists jusst ssssstand by and keep me looking like your pet snake and eating eggssss…" Snakes slapped the egg away into one of the walls with his tail "Asssss I wait for the day that I will become a man again! Do not forget my child who exactly founded Cobra! Who put you on the throne that I once sat upon! If I ssssay that these two die they die!" the mutated noble-man of Cobra-la's anger was palpable and the new commander had not the heart to remind his father that after Serpentor's shameful defeat and Globulus's death that it had been he who had gathered the survivors together to reform Cobra and most were content to look at him exactly as that, a pet of the new leader. It was a sad end that he hoped would not be the final chapter of the founder of Cobra.  
  
"If I am to die Cobra Commander…" Destro spoke to Snakes as the young armored man slammed down his fist on the side of his table.  
  
"I AM COBRA COMMANDER NOW!" Snake's son said in a hiss filled with hate. "My father is the symbol of Cobra and it's heart. Snakes is what he is called for his coils are numerous in this organization but I am the head of this organization and the master of it's military and you will address me as such. It is a small enough price for both of you to pay once you have sworn loyalty to the Cobra hood anew."  
  
The new Cobra Commander recalled briefly his history. He had grown up a young man under the name Jonathan Sharp and had lived his entire existence as the half-breed child of the founder of Cobra with one of his slaves. It had been a harsh existence growing up with none but half-mad private tutors in the ancient arts of war and honor from both sides of his heritage but he had learned well and even attended a military academy in the United States, served a tour of duty, before taking his leave with his entire platoon to join the ranks of Cobra. He had lost count of the men he had killed in honorable battle and the missions he had fought but he would not be treated as a lackey of those whose own greed motivated their service to Cobra.  
  
Destro breathed in deeply and crossed his arms, even as the Baroness answered for him.  
  
"Very well. Cobra Commander." The Baroness obviously had made her decision that he was unworthy of the mantle, which had been thrust upon him. "I think I speak for both Destro and myself when we question exactly what Cobra has to offer us now. You speak of vision and your…little toys…" she looked around at the station and up at the view-screens showing the signs of Cobra's initial triumphs. "Are impressive, but what is to prove to us that you are not going to turn into the bumbling fool your father proved to be for all the years we served him."  
  
Snakes hissed angrily at her, and had the new Cobra Commander been a less controlled man, he would haven broken her neck with his bare hands for the insult that she had paid his father and family. "You will find, Baroness, in due time that I am more than capable of managing this army and it's resources effectively. If you swear allegiance and manage somehow to keep that vow you will be rewarded with troops, income, and a position at the advisory of the most powerful individual in the world when the time comes. You, Destro, I trust can make due with the restoration of your arms manufacturing plants and supply lines. I have little skill for such but I have managed to regain the grip your family once possessed on the market for you."   
  
"And if we refuse?" Destro asked and if he had not the Baroness would have. It was not difficult to follow their thought processes, and if one understood one, one understood the other.  
  
"The obvious answer, Destro, is I will make sure that you are ejected out of an airlock along with your lover. You will also find Cobra loyalty has somewhat changed in the past decade. Where once if you managed to kill me and my father, highly unlikely I might point out, you might have been able to win the loyalty of my soldiery…now they would simply execute you and follow my designated successor to our glorious destiny."  
The Commander felt the need to head off that particular area of their thought, Destro was possessed of his own sense of honor but that required the destruction of anyone above him he thought less than capable of his duties.  
  
"I see." Destro nodded before bending down on one knee before the Cobra Commander. The Baroness would not be subject to such humiliation and merely stood. "I pledge my allegiance to a reborn Cobra then Cobra Commander."  
  
"I as well." The Baroness said with her eyes flashing.  
  
***  
  
Colonel Falcon sighed pulling into his base house's drive way. His wife Jinx was probably just back from the grocery store and he was already itching to be with his new daughter, Amanda. The meetings on base had been boring as usual and nothing really to speak of save training and budgets. It was nothing to the rush that had been fighting the forces of Cobra in the Himalayas. It was odd thinking about that period in his life again, but there was hardly a day that went by he wasn't reminded in some way of how close the world had come to nearly being destroyed by the madmen that inhabited that surreal city.   
After being promoted to Captain for his part in the affair, he'd ended up serving the rest of his tour with Joe until it was abandoned and had spent the last decade traveling from base to base and sharing what he had learned as part of the organization. Getting out of his jeep Falcon walked through the front door of his house and immediately sensed that there was something distinctly wrong.  
  
"Jinx?" Falcon yelled out into the house before he heard his wife crying, and walked in. His wife was tough as nails and frankly scared Falcon on a number of occasions, whatever had her crying scared the soldier out of his mind as he walked over to her and looked at the screen and went white as a sheet.  
  
The Cobra hood was on the television and the unmistakable evil of that symbol radiated through the house like an altar to the devil. On the radio he heard the sound of a news report talking about the President of the United States being kidnapped by the forces of the once thought destroyed terrorist group along with hundreds of reported attacks worldwide. Clutching his wife's shoulder, Falcon took a deep breath and stared. He only blinked once as the telephone rang.  
  
"You should get that. It's Military command." Jinx said with a sigh as she wiped her eyes. The ninja woman's sixth sense occasionally creeped out and sure enough on the other line was military command.   
  
"Yes, Sir, I just saw it. No, Sir, I was out in the field inspecting the training fields all morning, Sir. You want to me to what, Sir? No I'm not arguing, I'll catch the first flight out to Utah." Falcon listened to the rather angry voice of the one man he feared in the entire world on the other line, Brigadier General Conrad Hauser codenamed Duke. He'd been asked to head directly back to the former G.I. Joe headquarters and on the first flight out. It was obvious that it had something to do with Cobra but Falcon wondered exactly what it was going to be. He thought they might want his expertise on this for any new trainees or strategy sessions but he'd only really been involved in five missions with Cobra and the last three were mop-up actions when they were broken and the BET destroyed thirteen years ago.  
  
'Can't they find other Joes to do this kind of stuff?' the Colonel thought for a moment before he shrugged his shoulders. The President was missing and Cobra was back, he should, no he was proud to help in any way he could, his country needed him. Falcon then made a long distance call to Washington and his father, Clayton M. Albernathy, General Hawk. If anyone would know about this it would be him, but he wanted to leave him a message nonetheless, as usual he wasn't home either.  
  
Jinx looked back at him from over the couch "You better get packing. Duke isn't going to want you to be late and your going to be doing something important…I can tell."  
  
Falcon nodded and kissed his wife on the forehead before heading to get packed. He had a very bad feeling about what was ahead.  
  
*** 


	2. 

  
July 7th, 2001  
  
Snakes slithered beside Cobra Commander as the Troop transport continued humming across the oceans of the Atlantic. The Phantom-Choppers had managed to carry off the majority of the world's leaders up to Cobra Station and they were already being processed. The Commander looked down from a walk platform to an acre of Cobra plasma tanks, his elite rocket pack Cobra Commandoes, and a small contingent of BATS Mark V which would prove extremely useful once activated. The development teams had managed to somewhat mitigate their gross stupidity. Still the Commander despised the machines, they separated a warrior from the action and felt no affection for the cause but merely mindless fanaticism.  
  
"So what's your great plan Cobra Commander? Do you intend to just try and ransom the world's leaders or just try and get them to sign over control of the planet to you now?" The Baroness asked and her words were getting increasingly annoying. Still the woman knew her business and already he could feel several divisions in his military were benefiting from her expertise.   
  
"Hardly, Baroness. I am not so stupid as to think the ransoms of elected leaders would be worth the cost to acquire them nor idiotic to believe the non-elected's countries would want them back. The power to control lies in the hearts of the people and it is they're minds I must win." The Cobra Commander smiled as Snakes hissed, the former Commander had never much cared for such sentiments and preferred to view the planet as a chessboard of powerful kings ruling mindless slaves. "This is merely a way of sewing confusion among the world's populous and government until stage two of my plan can be put into effect."  
  
"And that would be Commander?" the Baroness asked with a slight arch of her eyebrow which showed she had her interest piqued.  
  
"Nothing of your concccccern." Snakes whispered with his eyes glaring at the Baroness in a distinctly hungry look. It had taken nearly six years to fully restore his intellect to that of a man along with extensive psychological counseling and neural-surgery. Still Snakes was a human intellect in a snake's body and it gave pause to the Cobra Commander the thought what it must be like to be denied all the pleasures of a man and the thrill of battle, it was most disturbing.  
  
"All in good time, Baroness." The Commander smiled "First we shall see to the finality of the First Stage of my plan. I must attain legitimacy in my reign over the spiritual foundations of Cobra, to that end I must destroy my only rival for such ruler ship." The Commander said with a smile as he noticed with his serpentine eyes that the Baroness found the entire sentence he had just said idiotic. The woman did not understand the holy mission that was Cobra nor the ideals that it stood for were ingrained into his heart. The Commander also had the honesty to himself that it was also a private matter of revenge.  
  
"Ssssserpentor." Snakes hissed as the Cobra Commander looked at his father and nodded. The genetic bastard of a thousand dictators, rapists, and bandits had been created by the heathen Globulous and the Deranged dentist for the purposes of taking away from his family the rightful mantle of ruler ship of Cobra. The creature for nearly thirteen years had lied in decadent luxury after his defeat at Cobra-la and wasted away the resources that should have gone to rebuilding.   
  
"You intend to attack Cobra Island?" the Baroness asked. The island had been taken by the G.I. Joe force briefly but bizarre laws and corruption had allowed what little had not been sold out by traitors to fester like a rotting boil on the sovereign state that the original commander had once ruled as an iron fisted god.  
  
"Indeed and soon for the march of history waits for no man and if he does not keep up…" the Cobra Commander repeated one of his favorite axioms but his father down at his side completed it for him.  
  
"He is treaded over." Snakes murmured.  
  
The Baroness smiled and it occurred to the Commander and even Snakes likely that it had been the testimony of the two Corsican twins, Xamot and Tomax, whom had placed the Baroness in a United States penal institution for the last decade. It had probably reached her as well that the treacherous members of the Crimson Guard were still thus free and running an extremely profitable criminal empire from Cobra Island with Serpentor as it's figurehead. The thought made the Commander sick that Cobra's image was branded next to poisons sold to children, the festering slavery which had always been his private pain, and other institutions that fed on society like a cancer rather than strengthening it like pain.  
  
"I will begin making preparations for the attack immediately Cobra-Commander." The Baroness smiled before walking off, no doubt to join her lover, Destro, in sharing the news.   
  
"I want her dead and ssssssoon." Snakes murmured and looked up at the Commander who merely gazed with his dark eyes to the attackers. It was sometimes shameful the way his father pursued vengeance.  
  
"Find forgiveness in your heart, Father, until the time she reveals whether or not she has learned the lessons of loyalty, decency, and courage. She has spent a great time in the flames of adversity and it is still possible that she is to become tempered steel and the firmest of allies." The Commander dearly hoped this was so for the destruction of the old order pained him dearly.  
  
"And if she should prove as treacherousssssss as I think she will be, My Sson?" Snakes murmured, taunting him with the acts necessary to be a proper ruler. Sun-Tzu in the Art of War had known if one's troops did not take their mission seriously then one had to resort to extreme measures to enforce discipline.  
  
"Then like iron full of impurities she will be consumed." The Commander sighed disgusted, knowing his father would take great pleasure in the literal application of such.  
  
***  
  
Shipwreck utterly hated Bermuda. He wasn't exactly sure how he'd gotten here after his tenure in the service mercifully ended, once the G.I. Joe team was done the Navy had just shuffled him under one jackass after the other and he had to admit even the Joes had their share of jackasses. Unfortunately he also had to admit being paid to have someone fire a laser pistol at your head was better and more consistent work than the number of schemes he'd ended up going after. He'd tried tuna fishing, whale hunting which just got a bunch of wacko's after him, and now his latest venture into the wonderful world of tourism had just made him want to plunge his ship into a cruise ship's propeller.  
  
"Dry-rotted piece of pppsssit." Polly the Third whistled on his shoulder and Shipwreck had to admit he missed Polly the third's mother a great deal. Polly the Second had been very short lived and he was tempted on occasion to remind her sister that when you claw Shipwreck's date even close friends can be given the heave hoe off the plank.  
  
"Yeah tell me about it." Shipwreck murmured and took the time to kick his ship in the side of it's paneling. The blasted thing had betrayed him just like it seemed everybody else from sea to shining sea had. It was then that his cell-phone rang and Shipwreck was tempted to toss the damn thing into the ocean. It was a hundred to one odds that it was anyone other than one of his creditors, some one who was threatening to kill him with a harpoon, or a tourist whom wanted the standard three-hour tour.  
  
"Shipwreck's Tourism Service, we're ship shape and ready to sail!" Shipwreck smiled so hard his jaw hurt as he gave up all self-respect to give that incredibly stupid line. Shipwreck turned five shades of purple when he heard Duke's voice on the other line. The last he had heard the Sergeant-Major had gotten a commission somehow from the Army for saving some brass during a field exercise gone wrong.  
  
"Yeah I know it sounds corny but it brings in the cash. Bucket loads. Now I'm a busy man Duke so could you cut with the chatter and cut to the point…" Shipwreck looked around the deserted dock and figured everyone but him was at a party somewhere this night. "I've got three beautiful blondes here waiting to also take me out to see what a real sailors all about so make it snappy."  
  
Polly the Third then whistled, "You're a pig squawk!" as Shipwreck snapped her beak shut with his two front fingers, the bird was picking up all the wrong things she heard. Duke however obviously wasn't buying it and worse was yammering on about what had been on the radio all day, which Shipwreck admitted had him a little up in arms as well.  
  
"Yeah you should have bombed Cobra Island when you had the chance, gutted the survivors, and let me sell them as genuine ex-terrorist bait. I imagine I would have finally made a profit. So what's the deal?" Shipwreck sighed listening. The President, as much as he loved the big, stupid guy, was probably already dead and any other yahoos the snakes had managed to bag.  
  
Shipwreck ran his tongue over his mouth as he heard Brigadier General Duke's offer. "Uh huh, so let me get this straight. Ol' Big ears was having the meeting Cobra kidnapped him from to announce he was reforming the Joes? How's that for irony. Uh huh, consultant work….need the troops to be beaten into shape, huh?" Shipwreck considered for a moment that frankly being an enlisted man had been fairly stable but this wasn't probably going to last, still it'd be nice to meet the guys, even for free. "I'll do it for five thousand dollars."  
  
At Duke's sputter Shipwreck knew he should have asked for fifteen. The warrant officer of the Joes would crumble though. The military bought hammers for fifty dollars after all. "Okay it's a deal. I'll make my way up to the Pit A.S.A.P with the bill footed to Uncle Sam." Shipwreck then punched the end button on his cell-phone and put it up before Duke could say anything else.  
  
"Pig!" Polly the third said as Shipwreck smiled and said "Polly we're going to do our country a great service…it's mister Pig to you now."  
  
***  
  
Lieutenant-Colonel Falcon whistled as he walked from the army jeep, which he had driven down practically deserted roads in Utah. The entire country was in shock, it seemed, due to the World Leaders' kidnapping and the assassinations of military personnel all across the board. Throwing his duffel bag over his shoulder he looked at the G.I. Joe Pit. The base had been abandoned for nearly a decade as a militarily liability and though it seemed like it was now in working condition, he doubted it really had been kept ready for reactivation at any point.   
  
"So this is what I'm here for." Vincent Falcone-Albernathy couldn't help but feel a sense of pride welling in him. The fighter-jets of the team were currently getting a good scrub down and he knew even if he was just here for a little while, it would be glorious. He actually was personally hoping as an officer still in good combat condition that he'd have a place in the command structure as well, but that was fairly hard to believe. Aside from a brief stint in the Gulf War serving as a field commander he hadn't done much to be proud of.  
  
"Falcon!" a voice called and the distinctive sound of a jeep driving up led him to turn to face General Duke himself. Giving a salute, the Colonel stood at attention and did his best to look proud. He'd resented Conrad's attempts to protect his career just like he'd resented his father Clayton's influencing the system for his benefit but he'd learned to respect the man for everything he'd accomplished and was grateful he had gotten as far as he had thanks to his advice and second chance. It still burned him how much damage he'd done to the team due to his inability to man a guard post.  
  
Driving the jeep was a man Falcon didn't recognize but was obviously a private of the Joes with the distinctive patch sewn in his uniform already. The man's face was covered in scars and he had the oddest-looking sunglasses on, they weren't very distinct but for the fact they had red lenses.   
  
"At ease. It's good you' made it. The entire place is being activated ahead of schedule thanks to the attacks by Cobra and I wanted to make sure you were aboard when it happened." Duke walked with a slight swagger as they moved and Falcone almost thought he looked like his father and Duke's stepfather when they were younger as he did it.  
  
"I can imagine. There hasn't been any music on the radio for the last few days and only more news reports on the extent of the kidnappings and attacks. I stopped trying to get an accurate account of what happened hours ago." Falcon said buckling himself in the back.  
  
"Well unfortunately we do have an account. Demolition-Derby get to it." The General said to the private and Falcon blinked, getting an idea of the man from his code-name. Once they were off Conrad started again "2,035 have been reported missing or killed during the recent Cobra attacks and the majority are high ranking political, economic, and military leaders from all across the globe. What few big-shots are left don't want it to get out just how paralyzed the government's become in recent events but they were able to agree we needed G.I. Joe back and yesterday."   
  
Lt. Colonel Falcon would have whistled the number with an open mouth had he not been in the presence of a private. "Sir, that's….amazing. How exactly did the sn…Cobra do it? Last I heard the organization was practically extinct and with good reason."  
  
Conrad Hauser bristled and it was obvious he hadn't a clue and it was annoying him a great deal. "That's what we intend to find out. We've got our best people working on it with everything from running fine tooth combs over the television footage retrieved from the Presidents kidnapping to looking over the bomb fragments they hit the Pentagon with to tracking down dirty informants on the street. We suspect it's some dissident element of the original organization that's found backing somehow. In any case your going to need to get to it if your going to whip the troops into some form of fighting order before your first combat mission and I'm talking in days. These are the best the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air force have to offer but they're as green as you when you first arrived."  
  
Duke slapped his chest over his heart and made a frown that was meant to reminded Falcon that his brother while he'd forgiven him, never intended to let his brother forget the lesson Serpentor's attack had given him. Vincent however was more concerned about exactly what he'd said.  
  
"My troops?" Falcon asked.  
  
"We're not exactly at the top of our game leadership wise and we need a man who knows his way around G.I. Joe procedure but can still run a combat mission if necessary. Thus I recommended you for field command and more or less general command of the Joes until I can get back here full time." Conrad said as the jeep arrived at the front base doors. "Then you'll still be field command." Duke chewed his lip like he was swallowing something unpleasant.  
  
"I'll be everything you need Duke and more." Falcon said, more than a little angry his brother wasn't sure he was up to the job.  
  
"You'd better." Duke said as the jeep pulled to a halt and they both got out.  
  
"Ah there you are." Falcon was surprised to see the familiar uniform of the ninja, Snake Eyes, and hear the voice of his father who was wearing a suit that looked like it had seen better days and had his arm in a sling and a splint over one of his legs. Despite the fact his hair had gone rather gray and he had spent most of the last decade behind a desk, he looked extremely fit.   
  
"What the.." Falcon began to ask his dad, what the hell had happened to him before he remembered the man was both his and Duke's superior officer. It sometimes got very annoying in the army to have family above you. "Sir!"  
  
"At ease. Duke it's good to see you, Falcon. I decided to take a tour of the base to make sure you got everything you needed and also pass along your orders. After the snakes tried to put me in the morgue I managed to get away to find that I'd been promoted. For the duration of this emergency I'm now General of the Army and as high as you can go." General Hawk then handed them both manila envelopes.  
  
Falcon shifted uncomfortably and shrugged as he took the information and saw satellite photos of Cobra Island.  
  
"We're not directly sure that Cobra Island is the origin of the attack but we're certain that Cobra has, at least, contact with the parties responsible. So we're heading up an all out reprisal assault on the island along with teams from volunteer nations. With any luck we can find out exactly where the missing leaders are and rescue them or at least pay back Cobra in full for what they have done." General Hawk sighed as he looked at Duke and Falcon.  
  
"And what about the old team?" Duke said with arms crossed.  
  
"I'm not comfortable with the idea of sending these untested soldiers against Cobras, even with allies. I approve of your bringing on as many as you can as consultants and as trainers, but if you want carte blanche to bring in any as commissioned officers…be my guest. Anyone wrangling for a promotion for the past few years will have a hissy fit for this but if they have a problem with it they can take it up with the current Commander in Chief which in absentee of a president, I think we're currently settling on the Minister of Agriculture, is me." General Hawk sighed, clearly not liking this one bit. Hawk didn't thrive under combat but endured it.  
  
"Well I'm glad to see your on board Snake eyes." Duke said offering his hand to the silent ninja who nodded back to him.  
  
"Well if you won't be needing me generals I'll guess I'll head down and inspect the troops to see what they're made of." Falcon said, already wondering what it would be like to coordinate strategy with the navy, air force, and marines. Taking Cobra Island would be a monumental task and a lot men, were going to die.  
  
Both Hawk and Duke made funny faces "About your troops, Son." The General of the Army said putting his hand around his son's shoulder.  
  
***  
  
Kessily Cooper, aka Icicle, smiled as she stacked the ice cubes in a pyramid in the middle of the rec room. The Alaskan woman was an athletic, small build redhead who was quite pretty but was dressed in a heavy winter outfit despite it being the middle of summer in a hot military base.   
  
"Okay, just try and knock it down." Kessily smiled at Christopher Gurnee, codenamed: Punch Card, the man who was sitting with a laptop on the billiard table and twitching his eyes from Kess to the computer screen rapidly as if doing math problems in his head.  
  
"This is ridiculous." Punch Card murmured as he threw a computer tech manual at the pyramid of ice cubes that didn't budge an inch from their location as the heavy book bounced off it. "What the?"  
  
"It's the ice melted perfectly. All I need is a little more time and someone to take me seriously and I will have the U.S. Army using ice as building material in every arctic mission they go on from here on out." Icicle smiled.   
  
"Hopefully that will be well after my time in the service is over. Hello Dad, hi I just called to check to see there was anyway again I could get out of this thing. I know you think I need it….yes I know I'm good at it! I'm good at everything…eh f." Kyle Wilson, alias Playboy, said to Kessily and then the rec room phone before hanging it up with a crash. A classically good-looking man with New England looks his face barely betrayed just how much he hated this place.  
  
"You should be proud of the service we are honored to perform for our country, young man. It's not many who are selected for the honor of serving in G.I. Joe." A man in his thirties with an intense look in his face fingered the gold cross around his neck even as he looked over his rifle, Thomas Seraphim whose moniker was Creed.  
  
"Would you mind not pointing that thing at me?" Kessily said, moving away from the general direction of the rifle's sight with more than a little grit to her teeth.  
  
"Yeah, Yeah, G.I. Joe real American heroes, God, Country, Apple Pie." Playboy murmured. "It's not like I dislike my country, I love it but I have better things to do with my time than spend the next few years trudging through back country and hoops trying to make a man out of me when I am already am, thank you."  
  
Creed adjusted the rifle's point of fire and put his gold cross back under his shirt as he said simply "No one knows whether or not they're a man until they've faced death in the face young man. I suspect you have yet to touch that particular rite of passage."  
  
"I see Obi-Wan. I will try and adjust my behavior." Playboy said with a sarcastic sigh.  
  
Creed opened his mouth to say something smart but was cut off by the arrival of yet another new G.I. recruit. Demolition Derby whose civilian name was James Patterson. He was in his mid twenties and very tall. The man was trained in virtually every type of vehicle the military was known to use but also had more than mild training in explosives. The man was definitely Joe material. "Hey guys, I've got some interesting news."  
  
Icicle gave him a sweet look and Creed smiled back. "So what is it?" she asked smiling in a flirt they knew wouldn't go into a relationship. The Alaskan and Demolition Derby had done some special training together and taken a liking to each other. Still one couldn't date someone in one's unit without going up on fraternization charges. Conrad Hauser had the decency to explain this to him in no uncertain terms. He'd once been involved with some member of the Joes himself but had decided that his love of the service was too strong to ignore and that was how he'd met his wife or something, he wasn't sure exactly how it had all went. Especially when his best friend, Flint, was seemingly involved for years with a fellow Joe before marrying his sweetheart.  
  
"Well I'm not too sure on the details but the head honcho said we may be attacking some place called Cobra Island fairly soon. Apparently it's either not classified or they didn't notice a private walking by." Demolition Derby said smiling, though looking close one could see the worried look that was in his eyes. He'd never been in a hostile fire situation before.  
  
"It's a rumor. There is no way in hell they are going to be sending us into combat." Playboy murmured.   
  
"If you're in the Army at some point there's the risk of entering a battle…or so I've heard." Punch Card said dryly as he continued typing in something.  
  
"We aren't trained yet. Whenever you enter a new branch you have to go through a new indoctrination in all the equipment, teamwork, blah, blah, blah. We just got here yesterday." Playboy sighed and started calling someone else, probably another girlfriend.  
  
"Stranger things are known to happen, young man." Creed sighed and got up before heading out the door with not another words.  
  
***  
  
It was like a G.I. Joe reunion at the Pit's main computer room. Most of the equipment was being replaced with much more efficient ones but that would take several days of heavy lifting and setting up to be in full operating condition. Still most everyone wasn't concerned about that and was enjoying the company of their fellow Joes.  
  
"Well leaving the military was hard but I managed to take over my parent's company and add my own stint to it. I'm actually considering running for the United States Senate just to give Flint a heart attack." Lady Jaye smirked, the woman still as lovely as ever and dressed in a power suit save for the black leather glove on her hand.  
  
"That's great news, Jaye. I'd make it a point to vote for you but we aren't in the same state." Scarlet smirked as she drank her coffee, it was fairly early in the morning and it had been a while since she'd traveled extensively or lived by an army schedule. Still the Joe base felt almost like home even after all this time. She just wished it wasn't under these circumstances that they were meeting again.  
  
"So how are Conrad and Dashiell?" Lady Jaye smirked as she looked like she could toss a javelin at any second still. Scarlet had asked her to be godmother and to this day she hadn't regretted the decision, even if they hardly saw each other.   
  
"Good. I left them with my cousin. I almost feel not right about leaving them at a time like this but they gave me a call to come down here and anything I can do to help…" Scarlet shrugged, Lady Jaye knew the drill.  
  
"Yeah. Flint was having a conniption fit the moment he found out about this. He had his pistol ready all day waiting for Cobra to break down the doors so he could get a crack at them. I haven't seen him this angry since they gave Duke a promotion to General." Lady Jaye smirked. Scarlet smiled at that one, Flint was still a Colonel, and a high one, but he hated it. Currently he was talking with Roadblock whom she overheard something about football training and Gung Ho who apparently ran a restaurant now.   
  
"Alright people, it's time to give you a summary of why you were all called down here." Scarlet watched then Duke and Snake Eyes both walk in and a large amount of memories poured in that always did when she was around him. She'd never really loved Duke but he was still one of the great presences of her life. Snake-Eyes she'd thought she'd love for a long time, but the man would never abandon his anger at the world and still thought of her like a sister in some ways, which wasn't healthy for a relationship. Oh well, either was better than the jerk she'd been with, but she could think of only maybe one other man whom she would have been happy to spend the rest of her life with. The rest Scarlet just wished she had her crossbow to fight off. She was still an attractive woman. It then occurred to her she could probably get another one issued.  
  
"Yeah it's about time. I've still got a phone company to run you know…Sir." Dial-Tone said smiling as he looked sheepish at the General.  
  
"Yeah, I understand we've all got lives to live and we'd much rather be doing them then coming back to this old place." Duke said as a slight ripple around the Joe's indicated that quite a few disagreed with that station, something the man was smiling about. "However you all know about Cobra's recent resurrection…."  
  
"The Snake in the grass came back with a blast." Roadblock said. Still having not learned grammar apparently, Scarlet smirked.  
  
"Right. The U.S. Military is doing it's best to adjust and prepare for retaliation but I haven't told you the worst that Cobra's attacks were also specifically aimed at crippling our ability to combat the threat. The kidnappings and attacks overshadow someone deliberately destroying all records of Cobra in the U.S. Military at several installations along with freeing numerous prisoners that were former members of the organization including Destro, the Baroness, Major Blood, and Zarana." Duke said feeling his chin and Scarlet wondered why Zartan wasn't among those rescued. She'd had watched the man get a life sentence herself. "Evidence points to the fact while Cobra suffered quite a few causalities in this encounters they were mainly successful and point to the existence of traitors in the United States government along with their new ability to seemingly appear and disappear out of thin air. Given these circumstances we need all the help we can get in planning our enemies next move and people we can trust battle plan wise. I'd like your help in doing this in bringing Cobra down again and this time for good. Some of you I'd like as strictly advisors, such as Ship-Wreck and Lifeline, while others I'd very much like to return to a position in combat such as Snake-Eyes. You are all free to refuse, of course, but this is the sign of a major power-play by Cobra and unless we stop it there is no telling what will happen to the world at large."  
  
Everyone was silent and to her surprise Scarlet spoke first. "Okay where do I get my crossbow back?" she said smiling 


	3. 

July 13th, 1960  
  
Children had no names in the Pits of Cobra. The actual location of the headquarters was Cambodia but few knew the ancient structures which had once been refuges of those seeking religious enlightenment were now home to a brutal trade in slaves, weapons, and mercenaries to raise money for the master of the organization whose face was always covered in a black shroud. It would be twelve more years until the hideous brutality of the terrorists would become a threat to the leaders of the nation and it's neighbors in Vietnam and Korea where it had also done extensive business, and they would be driven away. Such thoughts were not for the nameless child that dwelled here however, only survival mattered. The other children shied away from the boy for his strange features and the warnings from the other slaves that he was somehow touched by the not quite-human creature that ruled here.  
  
"Mama, am I not a person?" the boy asked leaning against his mother. Already his strange golden hair and slightly greenish tinged skin in certain spots marked him as an outsider.   
  
"Hush my child. Do not think such things. You are my child and tinged with love and care to your very bones." The lady whose name he would later discover to be Maryna, patted his head even as the soldiers arrived in the hole, which was their home in the ruins and the tunnels dug underneath. Though he had no name according to the rulers of the pit, she in private called him Saru.  
  
"There's the little brat." A man of flaxen hair dressed in camouflaged clothing that was deliberately meant to appear similar to American G.I. forces save for the red cobra stitched on the sleeve, walked in followed by several other men of mixed nationalities. Each however was holding a heavy machine gun and it was obvious they were coming for him.  
  
"Get away girl." The man said as another one of the beasts pulled the boy from his mother's arms and he screamed. He struggled against them like he had always struggled when they came to take her away but this time he stopped because of the sound of thunder that roared through the hole and his mother's body falling limp stunned him.  
  
"Eh, what the hell did you do that for?" one of the other men said as the boy stared at the body.  
  
"There. The boss said to do her in and get the brat, you lunkhead. Apparently he's got plans for the little runt. Freaking loony bastard that he is." The flaxen haired leader said as he was carried by his shoulders down darkened hallways into the higher levels of the compound for perhaps the first time in his life.  
  
July 13th, 2001  
  
The new Cobra Commander woke in a cold sweat from the dream that was burned in his mind. Getting up from his bed in the heart of Cobra Station, he walked forward to the bathroom and stared into the mirror. Years had passed, many battles had been fought, and still the stings of the days early in his life span were born into his brain. The cold black eyes that had been genetic replacements for the one's lost to a G.I. Joe sniper rifle during his time as a Crimson Guard told him he grown up strong of will, courage, and form but his mind told him there was something fundamentally wrong with the situation he lived in. Since the day he had been removed from his mother's arms he had been taught respect for one's superiors and the honorable way of Cobra.  
  
"This is your punishment. You are singled out from all the domestic and wild animals of the whole Earth and cursed. You shall grovel in the dust as long as you live, crawling along your belly. From now on you and the woman shall be enemies, as will all your offspring and hers. And I will put the fear of you in the heart of you into the woman and between your offspring and hers. He shall strike you on the head and you will strike at his heel." The commander repeated the line into the mirror that had appealed to him regarding Cobra's mission on the Earth, to recover the paradise that a snake in that particular creation story had removed from mankind. It had also helped explain to his young mind why Cobra was so feared and hated even when intellectually he knew his father had been conducting a war without regard for what was precious to mankind and that was why his organization bore the brunt of an evil omen.  
  
"What are you saying?" a voice called from his bed and he looked backed to Anya, his Crimson guardswoman, Fallen Angel. She had awoken from her slumber and he looked at her with a softened glare. She was a woman of great wrongs committed against her thanks to the Communists of her land and she had joined him out of respect to his speeches, enamored of them and ultimately him. Though he cared for her and she for him, he knew that her heart rested with a young man killed long ago and his for a very alive woman who had loved a man that might have never been.  
  
"Nothing, My Lady. You should get your rest. We are preparing for the attack on Cobra Island this afternoon and I had best get dressed for the final war-councils that must be held today." The Cobra Commander known as Saru, Johnathan, and a host of other names throughout his life walked to his wardrobe and set out his suit.  
  
"Then I must prepare as well my Commander. I like not you entering that pit of vipers with only those treacherous greedy fools to serve as your compass." Fallen Angel murmured as she herself stirred. She realized she had miss-spoke by the raising of her companion's eyebrow.   
  
"Never forget that it is snakes that we must emanate. Distasteful as I find Snake's organization I must acknowledge that it is the root of where I come from and the tree that we are grown from is only as good as they." The Commander smiled at that particular analogy and once again reaffirmed all the life work that his father had done was worthwhile if he succeeded where he had failed and the others below him had disgraced the Cobra hood repeatedly.   
  
"Then we had best avoid giving bitter fruit." Fallen Angel replied and the Commander nodded. "We had best shower and prepare for the worst, My Love. I have a duty to protect you." She smiled but the Lord of Cobra did not return it.  
  
'Love.' It was an almost alien concept to the cold-hearted leader, almost.  
  
***  
  
Lady Jaye's javelin sailed towards the cardboard HISS Viper and it's front exploded at just the point it would if the javelin had hit a real one. Smiling to herself Lady Jaye blew on her fingers.  
  
"Still got it." She said proudly.  
  
The deck of the United States Aircraft Carrier Patriot was full of chatter as it was quite obvious that the standard naval crew was not happy having it's hold full up with a bunch of varying military branches grunts with unusual personality quirks. She missed the old Joe carrier but Cobra had pretty much guaranteed that puppy would be out of commission forever. The Navy also had quite a few other troops running on other ships as well, this would probably be the biggest operation she'd go on, at least given the fact she was a civilian who'd managed to win a temporary repost.  
  
'At least I made Major.' She smirked to herself.  
  
"Hey!" LJ heard then her husbands voice behind her and she let her triumphant smile shine. Flint, the ever-dashing Colonel, was looking quite well and it was obvious the meeting had gone well.  
  
"So how is your dear sister managing to handle three bouncing beautiful babies?" Lady Jaye smirked as Flint frowned. The Colonel, as he hated to be called, loved his daughters, Marissa, Rebecca, and Shana, but it hurt his all too sensitive pride to call even the four year old a baby.  
  
"They're hardly bouncing…" Flint began as LJ kissed him on the lips, fraternization laws be damned.  
  
"I know. I know." Lady Jaye smirked and sighed "So how far are we until snake central?"   
  
"We're still in international waters but we're only three hours away from Cobra Island. Wild Bill is going to go in with a team of air-strikers to take out their communications network first." Flint said and looked toward the horizon. "He should be back any time now…." The subtle understatement was one she'd not heard in a long time. He'd always used it whenever he wasn't on field missions on the Joe team as if he was the guaranteed factor that would make sure everything turned out alright.  
  
"You wonder if he's a General yet?" LJ poked Flint in the chest as he looked down at her with a frown.   
  
"The day Wild Bill commands a large portion of the air-force is the day I start investing heavily in anti-aircraft regiments." Flint smiled as he squinted. Already the sun was beginning to set.  
  
"So(,) Flint(,) do you think we're still up to snuff?" Lady Jaye asked a very personal question as she bit the side of her cheek. If anyone else had asked her that question or her husband, she would have pounded them into the ground. She was very proud of her physical ability and how she'd maintained it over the years. It had been one of the reasons she'd joined the army, to see how good she really was. Still it had been more than a decade since than either of them had fought Cobra's creatures. Lady Jaye didn't like to admit it to Flint but sometimes she still had nightmares about those things. Friends lost, people killed, and wave after wave of masked warriors and BATS. If Flint ever did, the Colonel hid them well.  
  
Dashiel stopped for a moment and looked at his wife, Alison, before he answered. "I think whatever Cobra has we're ready for it. I'm more worried about the new recruits personally."  
  
Alison Hart-Burnett blinked and wrapped him in a tight hug. Lady Jaye had left the military because she wanted to have children and while Duke was polite enough to ignore, quietly, Flint's relationship with her while they worked fine together, she knew pregnancy would be a little harder to cover up. She wasn't afraid of being widowed or leaving her children without parents, mainly because the average Cobra Viper couldn't hit a billboard at a pace, but she knew Flint was thinking about it. It was one of the traits she loved in him, he always was thinking of everyone else first before himself.  
  
"Glad to hear it." Lady Jaye smirked "Dashiel. Now I'm ready to see if armor has gotten any better in my lucky number of years."  
  
She twirled a javelin in her hands as Flint scowled again.  
  
"Please, Alison, how many times do I have to ask. Don't call me that."  
  
***  
  
Serpentor was most displeased by the current turn of events. To think it had been nearly driving him insane that these same events were year after year were repeating themselves. In the heart of Cobra Island's palace where his throne rested, he rose from it and lifted his fist high into the air.  
  
"WHO IS IT WHO HAS DONE THIS? WHICH OF YOU IS THE TRAITOR! I COMMAND YOU TO STEP FORWARD!" the genetically engineered warlord's grip could have crushed a diamond it was so tight but none of the lackeys that Tomax and Xamot had gathered around his noble throne had any answer for him. Serpentor pulled one of the serpents from around his neck and thought about slaying one of the fawning toadies but merely sat down and placed his hand to his forehead, a serving-slave placing a cup of wine to his lips.  
  
'It was not supposed to end like this.' Serpentor shook his head as the red juice slide down his throat and he mustered the energy to swallow. He could remember ruling England, Rome, France at its' height, barbarian hordes and disciplined armies, but with a combined life of more than a thousand years of war and murder there was nothing but a small island and a gang of criminals that he was lord over. He felt it was most like Napoleon on the prison of Saint Helena and had even considered commissioning a biography of himself to add further to the irony.  
  
"It's these twins, I know it. They are plotting against me. More wine!" Serpentor said. He was genetically designed to never lose his fighting trim and once he had deduced this he had spared himself no lavish to distract him from the terrible reality that upon the destruction of Cobra-la he had become nothing more than a figurehead for a movement that had no goals but enrichment. After all this time the Cobra name though had begun to fade from the public's mind for the fear it engineered and Xamot and Tomax were considering killing him to shed the Cobra mantle entirely he was sure yet now there was no place on Earth that Cobra was not spoken with a terrified whisper anew.   
  
"AND I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!" Serpentor cried slamming the cup-bearer down twenty steps from his throne and onto the ground. The female cracked her skull on the ground and was bleeding but the Emperor of Cobra cared not for such weak creatures. There was undeniable reality that someone was using his destiny and army's name without him and even in his despair could he see that they had no intention of including him in on such profits as they would incur.  
  
"You! Assassins! SPIES! INFORMANTS! I offer you great wealth if you will find for me who is behind this! Your weight in gems!" Serpentor called and he was disgusted to discover only a few of them seemed truly to believe him before they began to depart. His mockery of a court had lost all respect for him in his occasional "tantrums" that resulted in the death of one of two of them. Worse he had lost even the powerful ally of greed, which would have helped him persuade them even more for they all knew now that the moneylenders of the same womb ruled all that he could give them.  
  
"I pray to you whatever gods of war exist that you send me a battle this day so I may prove I am still the greatest commander the world has ever known and all that will be written for Serpentor will not be a tomb inscription!" the Emperor of Cobra cried to the heavens even as alarms blared all about him. Cobra-la, which should have been his destiny, was destroyed and all chance of him ruling beside Pythonia of a race of new superior humans under the gentle beloved Golobulus were smashed but it appeared destiny still recognized his rulership over it.  
  
"The Communications station…." Tomax said rushing into his throne room.  
  
"Has been destroyed!" Xamot said coming in from a different entrance.  
  
"BY JOES!" They repeated together as they looked at each other across the great chamber.  
  
'Gods of darkness and night save me from such fools.' Serpentor felt his head before descending down the staircase. "It appears that the force that my enemies arrayed against me so long ago has returned to finish me off, despite your statements they could not do so, sniveling fools." Serpentor sighed at the twins. "Begin gathering your mercenaries, thieves, and dealers in exotic pleasures with the weaponry you have wasted far too less against. Under my fangs I will forge the rabble into an army that the world has never seen before and we will crush G.I. Joe once and for all."  
  
Tomax and Xamot, true to their nature of allowing considerable distance between them and being the main target of their foes bowed their heads toward Serpentor and surrendered control over Cobra Island's defenses to the creature of Dr. Mindbender. Oddly the oncoming rush of battle did not fill him with a sense of invigorating power and soon to be victory but a subtle sense that the final page was being written in the sordid tale of his existence.  
  
'That is a taste I enjoy indeed.' Serpentor said as he bit tongue just to taste the blood that poured forth.  
  
***  
  
"So we're not going to be in combat you said." Icicle murmured amidst the spray of the ocean as the Liberator Duck Mark 12 headed from alongside the U.S.S Patriot towards the waters of Cobra Island. Inside the very same platform were members of the original G.I. Joe team whom Kessily had always admired. The Alaskan had grown up watching their exploits and though they were classified, one couldn't help but watch some of their missions against Cobra.  
  
"Okay so I made a bloody mistake. Sod off." Playboy said with a murmur of British profanity while carrying a very large heavy repeating laser cannon. Icicle had heard the man's father had been from England or something.  
  
"If you'll kindly both pipe down I'm going to keep driving us. You know I was only supposed to be a consultant on th…incoming!" Shipwreck yelled, moving the boat to the left even as beside them some of Cobra Island's defense beams began blasting the ocean as fountains of stinging boiling water and steam struck them. "A fine time for one of our damn drivers to get sick. Who the hell has ever heard of a consultant driving a troop-ferry?"   
  
"Shipwreck, please." Scarlet said beside him even as she mounted up the side of the small Joe aquatic assault vehicle's cannon. It was called a "Liberator" Duck Type 12 but Scarlet was more of the mind that the speedy thing just be called their ticket onto the island's shores, if Shipwreck could pay attention to the attacking fire. Nearly a hundred other Liberators were sailing forward to Cobra Island beside her and a number of them were under pretty heavy fire too.  
  
'Let's see if I can fix that.' Scarlet took aim with the cannon and launched a powerful energy blast that exploded towards the island and was pleased to see an explosion. Unfortunately there were numerous other emplacements elsewhere and it was sobering that one of the Liberators beside her detonated with all aboard killed.  
  
"Alright everyone I want those emplacements taken out as soon as you hit the beach. They're angled mostly for taking out air force attacks and oncoming large vehicles but they're sure to be a whole lot of snakes on the ground when we hit as well. It's only going to get worse as we make a break for Serpentor's citadel and the capital of New Eden. We're going to drop in some armor but expect to face a lot more than they can take out one on one until we are in full command of the shores." Colonel Falcon said into his speaker to the team that had been assigned him. Flint was leading the second group and Duke was coordinating from the Patriot. Some British guy was commanding a third group of international soldiers but Falcon didn't expect much from them. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe not.  
  
"Get ready for Hell." Creed said, lifting up his own gun as Kessily back up to the helicopters carrying the G.I. Joe Eradicator tanks that would be led by Demolition Derby in this assault.  
  
"Is any one else concerned about the fact that we're going to be expected to take out a group of tanks on foot…cause I know I am." Playboy lifted a hand up with a wave as everyone looked at him like he had said something stupid. "I kind of knew that was going to be the response I was going to get."  
  
The Liberator Duck jerked again, this time to the right, as the explosive results came only within a half a foot of passing through Punch card. The young communications expert didn't seem to notice however. "Colonel Falcon, I have a line on Cobra's battle plan and I've decrypted they're transmissions. I should be able to give you a real time display of what the Cobras are doing."  
  
"Good work, PC. See if you can figure out a way to send the troops on a few wild good chases away from the South, East, and West we're attacking from. The less we have to face entrenched the better." Falcon murmured even as he picked up his laser rifle and stared onto the beach, which was already filling up with Cobra Viper Gliders, F.A.N.G's, and flight pods above and H.I.S.S tanks and S.N.A.K.E. battle armor below.  
  
"Scarlet, be a doll and blow those things on the beach to Hell before I crash into them." Shipwreck said as he pulled out his pistol even as they came into rifle range and blue energy bolts sailed across the side and front of the Liberator Duck 12.  
  
Fiery rockets and explosions illuminated the sky above them as Wild Bill and the rest of the air-force backup dueled in the new Skyblaster jets XO's. The Cobra force was badly outmatched in skill and technology but it was obvious that even if they were going to win it would be a tough fight with plenty of causalities. "Everyone get your rockets and rifles ready we're going ashore." Falcon commanded lifting a grenade in one hand and his personal pistol in the next before they struck shore, the defense force having already been blasted into so much ash around them by Scarlet's good shooting.  
  
"YO JOE!" Falcon cried entering the fray that was the war beginning on Cobra Island.  
  
***  
  
The new Cobra Commander petted the diamond on the back of his father Snake's head even as the serpent watched with hungry eyes the approaching image of Cobra-Island. The cloaked floating vessel contained within it the most advanced army in the world and it was prepared to strike down its' foes once the initial squeamishness of the other leaders was overwhelmed.  
  
"You cannot be serious! You actually intend to attack an island already under attack? Look down! The transmissions show that G.I. Joe is already going to destroy it for you! What more do you want?" The Baroness DeCobray's objection to the continued moving ahead of the attack plan was quite thorough.  
  
"My thirteen yearssssss of imprisonment in the form of a Sssssssssnake Baroness hassss hardened me. Perhapssss a similar time for you imprisssoned in the form of a human hassss made you ssoft." Snakes turned its' head toward the woman and spoke with sinister eloquence.  
  
"The Baroness is right. Let our enemies destroy one another and we can finish off whoever is the victor." Destro spoke with pragmatic sense as always. "I have just returned from the darkness to a position of power, I do not wish to waste those I can use to make up for the years I have spent planning."  
  
The Commander sighed and put his leather snake-skinned gloves together as he gazed down toward the imagery of the island and the impending G.I. Joe attack, his introspective frown gradually turned into a contemptuous smile. "You speak of necessity and logistics, destruction and survival, if such were the case alone I would not be attacking Serpentor and the hovel he has built for himself. The man is a disgrace to himself and his troops who lie in pits of decadent squalor and indulge themselves in pleasures to forget who they once were. The glories of Cobra demand that this stain on our honor, MY HONOR, be expunged, not by the hands of our mortal enemies but myself. This is a message to the world, Destro, as much as it is repayment for the horror that was done unto my father by that hell-spawned freak which lives below on piles of gold that should belong to us. The message is quite clearly not only has Cobra returned but it is in a new form that can crush its' foes beneath it's coils with no effort whatsoever."   
  
"Inform the troopssss my sssson that they will be attacking not only the traitorsss of Cobra but alsssso the United States military and their lackeyssss." Snakes murmured as the Commander gestured to make it so.  
  
"Very well, if you will not call off this fool's errand I insist that you give me a laser pistol, a flight pod or whatever you have and let me attack!" The Baroness said to one of the few times the Commander, Destro, and Snakes actually were shocked. The Baroness gave a self-satisfied smile "I have wasted behind bars for more nights than I could possibly count because of those fools down below and I intend to take my vengeance if it is the last and only thing I do with my freedom."  
  
"Baroness, you can't possibly…" Destro began as the figure who had once again wore a mask of pure-gold looked on in shock towards the woman who was the love of his life. The arms dealer had been trying for some time to restore himself in her affections but a wall had formed in a decade and it was obvious it could only be worn down by blood.   
  
"Silence! You have no idea how long I have prayed, seething in the darkness, for a chance to take one moment of my life from this point on to inflict unforgettable suffering on Xamot, Tomax, or that insufferable serpent…no offense intended Snakes." The Baroness let the last part deliberately trail down to the transformed man below her.  
  
"Allow the Baroness access to one of my private squadrons of Cobra Commandoes. Protect her at the cost to your own lives and lead her to her vengeance. I will follow shortly." The Cobra Commander said as one of his Crimson guards behind him nodded, proceeding to gather the troops. "BEGIN THE DECLOAKING PROCEDURE!" the Commander shouted before heading toward rocket armor lockers, the warrior in charge of Cobra always led from the front, no matter how suicidal, and was last to retreat.  
  
"Your son, 'Snakes', is a fool." Destro sneered "He's going to get himself and my beloved killed and all because he has some antiquated notions of honor."  
  
"Such notionsssss have proven mosssst useful Desssstro in rebuilding my shattered empire. In any cassse if he falls killing Ssssserpentor then we will have a valuable martyr to our cause. The ssssame for the Baronesss." Snakes hissed to the gold plated figure beside him.  
  
Destro looked down at the giant cobra and gave a short cruel laugh "It's comforting to know that some things never change no matter how much time passes. You are still a venal creature of no soul."  
  
Snakes looked up at Destro with a look that reflected the one emotion left in his body, hate "I have indeed changed much Desstro but I cannot lead Cobra like thissss. I require a mouthpiece, whether it isssss my all too foolish idealistic offsssspring or you. Do not bite the hand that feedssss you either. My ssson already believes you are a traitor and not much convincing will be needed to persuade him your death is warranted or that he can forgive hisssss dear dear father that you never wake up from nine bites that would each kill a man when you go to bed some night and find me waiting."  
  
Destro shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably and gave acknowledgement to the serpent.  
The Cobra Commander returned then dressed in a battle armor that resembled a cross between a Crimson guard's uniform, a Viper troopers', and special modifications that looked straight from the laboratory. The Cobra Hood was prominently displayed holding the regal blue cape behind him. A rocket pack had been mounted on his back and in his hands was a strange double-edged spear of some sort with a laser on both ends. Destro noted beside him was a man who had lost all of his head and had half his face, his arm, and a leg replaced by what looked to be computers, metal, and electronics. Destro vaguely recalled the man's code-name to be Shareware and the man was a mental invalid Cobra had modified to genius level intelligence.  
  
"Shields are holding, Commander, and the troops are beginning their deployment, Sire." Shareware murmured before sitting down at a nearby console and small metal tentacles moved from his body into the communications grid. "What should I tell the hailing forces?"  
  
"Tell them that they have no chance to survive against us and to make their peace with God." The Cobra Commander said dryly.  
  
"What about 'All you base are belong to us'?" Shareware asked, the cyborg having a peculiar sense of humor born from being effectively logged onto the net twenty four hours a day, even to his superiors.   
  
"Pardon?" the Commander replied to the demented programmer.  
  
"Nothing, Sir. I'm relaying your message." Shareware replied as the Commander bashed his fist against his metal covered palm and gave his last pronouncement before igniting his jetpack and sailing through the front of the Reaper platform.  
  
"Then let the games begin."  
  
***  
  
Brigadier General Duke watched the battle screens light up with the presence of a Cobra hover cruiser that had suddenly just come out of the sky and started shooting forth ships of designs he'd never seen in his life.   
  
"WHAT IN BLAZES IS GOING ON OUT THERE?" Duke shouted as Dial-tone and several younger communications officers operate the channels about the U.S.S. Patriot. "Shoot that thing down!"  
  
"I'm trying Duke but that things got stuff from Star Trek on it! AHHHHH!" Duke heard the reply of Ace moments before static interrupted and Duke saw the man's fighter jet explode in a hail of fire from the strange vessel.  
  
'I hope he bailed out.' Duke thought.  
  
"Duke this is weird but the Cobra reinforcements aren't landing in any of the parts of the island that are being attacked but the North….and they're hitting Cobra Island's defenses too!" Dial-tone said in shock as Duke looked at the man for a moment and witnessed the new Cobra rocketeers and attack helicopters blasting at Joe and Cobra Island forces alike.  
  
"What the…." Duke said watching large boxes with rockets sailing from the cruiser down onto the island. "Whoever they are, they aren't friendly and I'm pretty sure they're responsible for whatever the hell has been going on for the past week and a half. Get the Colonels online and tell them they can expect company!"  
  
"You got it, Duke." Dial-tone relayed the message as Duke backed up and stared. Numerous thoughts were running through his head, but not the least of which was the idea they'd gone into this blind and were about to get hammered for it. He briefly thought about his wife, Angela, and wondered what she and the kids would do if he was killed before shoving the thought out of his mind, a Joe only thought about victory.  
  
***  
  
  



	4. The Battle for Cobra Island's freedom

Return of Cobra II  
  
Flint watched in horror as he came across the destroyed remnants of Colonel Howard Grant's force. The English officer had been assigned a third of the strike force but it looked like whatever they were fighting had them on the run as Flint pressed forward through the island with his laser rifle and passed several of the fleeing troops even as he saw on the ground dozens of dead United Kingdom, French, and German soldiers. The abundant bodies of Serpentor's loyalists lying all around were Flint's only consolation that they gave as good as they got.  
  
"FLINT, LOOK OUT!" Lady Jaye cried out from behind him and Flint got a good look of what was smashing through the jungle of Cobra Island like it was nonexistent. Similar to a BAT that he remembered from his days fighting Cobra's early attempts at creating a soldier stupid enough to follow their military advice. This thing was almost completely silver and much more heavily armed.   
  
Flint didn't hesitate to fire as many laser-rounds into the thing as he could before blinking as the bolts were seemingly absorbed into some kind of field around the thing. Its' armor was channeling the attack like a conductor. Flint watched the thing lift up its' arms and ducked to the side while the trees exploded behind him in a shower of fire. The thing was using everything fired at him to attack.  
  
"TARGET IDENTIFIED: DASHIEL FAIREBORNE. CODENAMED: FLINT. HIGH PRIORITY TARGET. EXTERMINATE." The robot ticked off his name and it was obvious the mindless things he had known were now hit men as well. "Great." Flint grabbed a grenade as the thing was struck in the head with one of LJ's spears, which exploded and sent the thing falling backwards but it was already getting up.  
  
"TARGET IDENTIFIED: ALISON R. HART-BURNETT FAIREBORN CODENAMED: LADY JAYE. HIGH PRIORITY TARGET. EXTERMINATE." The thing leveled a torrent of energy blasts at Flint's wife as he snarled and threw the grenade at point blank range. He barely moved to the side before the explosion sent shrapnel flying at him and tore his arm.  
  
"Geez, Flint try and get a little closer on those things why don't you?" his wife said, safe and sound. The special operative had managed to do a somersault out of the way of the BAT Mark V's blast.  
  
Flint looked at his torn arm and nodded. "I'll make it a point. The thing has some kind of absorb-dissipate armor. I swear of all the times to step into battle it's during a civil war…AHH." Flint said getting up and feeling his arm, which was bleeding badly near the shoulder.  
  
"My guess is that whoever is in charge of Cobra now isn't too fond of Serpentor. Here let me get that." Lady Jaye said pulling out a medical kit.   
  
"We don't have time. We're near Cobra Island's work villages and it's high priority that we lock them down. Especially if there are things like that running around." Flint pointed to the wrecked thing.  
  
"My guess is we still have a long fight ahead of us and we better hope whatever remains of our allies…" Lady Jaye looked at the dead fighters, "They had better be able to hold them off until the rest of the Joes get off the beach."  
  
It was then that Lady Jaye and Flint both heard the cracking of branches about themselves and were suddenly surrounded by several of Cobra Island's defenders, a rag tag group of Asian, African, and Hispanic men wielding laser rifles pointed at their chests.  
  
"You know, I just remembered that I always thought you were unlucky." Lady Jaye sighed and poked her husband in the chest before raising her arms in surrender.  
  
Flint reluctantly complied as well.  
  
***  
  
Falcon watched the assault on Cobra Island's beach become the bloodiest affair he'd ever witnessed out of anything he'd seen in the military. Grenades were dropped from the sky by gliding Cobra troops even as brutal firefights were being fought between Cobra Island mercenaries and the invading force of the United States and her allies. Falcon had already killed three men up close with his pistol and he'd watched a fellow Joe blasted by a laser bolt that was just inches from hitting himself.  
  
'Oh this is going to sound great for Jinx to tell my daughter. Sorry, Honey, but Daddy hasn't had the time to call you at the right time this week so please forgive him, especially since he was killed on the beach in some god forsaken part of the world he should have known better than to attack head on!' Falcon went over the response he expected Jinx to be giving him now. Being married to a Ninja was not the healthiest thing for a man who wanted occasional bouts of sanity. A HISS tank blast then splattered Falcon with hot sand as it missed him.  
  
"HEY! A MAN'S TRYING TO BE INTROSPECTIVE OVER HERE!" Falcon yelled as he watched the energy blasts fire from the weapon and knew they needed to take out that last little blockade against them getting into the heart of Cobra Island or at least off this damned beach.  
  
"I GOT IT!" Icicle, who was as strange a recruit as he'd ever seen, then fired what Falcone had presumed to have been a flame-thrower at the HISS tank and was shocked to find the thing icing over. The Tank now covered in the stuff fired again but instead of the laser blast arcing through the ice it instead burst in the things barrels and blew the armor to kingdom come.  
  
"How the…." Colonel Falcon blinked wondering how many laws of physics just broke right then and there.  
  
"It's based on arctic-temperature principles which allow the weapon to become much more dangerous than piddling little flames might inf.." Icicle was cut off by Falcon then.  
  
"Yeah, shut up. I get the idea. YO JOE!" Falcon cried, leading the charge past the burning Hiss tank as he took a few shots at a stupid low gliding Cobra and shot the guy into a tailspin into the nearby waters.  
  
Serpentor's palace was in the center of the Island and with a quick look it was easy to see they wouldn't have difficulty securing the beach for the armor drop-off and rest of the operation to make their assault on it. Hearing some static on his walky-talky as he contacted Flint and Colonel Grant he wondered if either of them were still alive at this point, the Cobras were more numerous and better armed than he'd thought. The fact they were killing each other as well as Joes didn't particularly encourage Falcon as much as it would normally, especially since they needed prisoners to tell them what exactly was going on.  
  
"bssssstttzzzzzz…this is Colonel Grant! We've been pinned down by Cobra Air Assault and reinforcements….I don't…bsssssztttt…much of my troops are dead. I need he…sssst." The walky-talky buzzed as Falcon sighed and shot a Cobra sniper taking aim from what he obviously thought was a good position in the bushes.  
  
Falcon slapped his head and found a position in the sand where he shoved another magazine into his pistol. The armor was already arriving and ready to start plowing through Cobra Island's jungle, but they needed every man they could get to take out Serpentor's palace. The obvious and most practical answer would be tell him we'll get to you later, but that was something Colonel Falcone-Albernathy wasn't quite ready to do.   
  
"SCARLET!" Falcon called feeling a little silly calling her by that name even when she was now ranked far below him and done actually less service than he had. He'd never quite gotten over the fact she was an original Joe and he was just pretty much along for the ride until now.  
  
"Yeah?" Scarlet said and Falcon blinked, wondering how she'd gotten six Cobra soldiers hog-tied and unharmed.  
  
'Maybe I'm doing something wrong here?' Falcon questioned himself as he looked at the corpses then grabbed his ear, Playboy having apparently fired a shot that burned off half of the field commander's earlobe.  
  
"AHHHhhh….Uh, Scarlet, would you be so kind as to lead the attack on Serpentor's palace. I've got some Europeans to rescue." Falcon said clutching his ear as he looked at Private Wilson and wondered just how much he could do to him as his commanding officer without getting arrested.  
  
"Uh Sorry…" Playboy said.  
  
"Sure I've done the leader thing thousands of times. I may be a bit rusty at it but I think I can handle a simple assault mission." Scarlet smiled something pretty as Falcon nodded and pointed for her to go at it.  
  
"Simple she said….great. I really do suck at this." Falcon thought to himself before looking at the new crop of Joes he'd been assigned as the first part of the new team being recruited from the Armed Forces. "Okay might as well get you guys some field experience. We're attacking…."  
  
Snake Eyes then dumped a Cobra trooper body at Falcon's feet as he looked down to see the man had been hiding in the jungle ready to kill him.  
  
"Um, thank you. We're attacking god knows how many heavily armed Cobra soldiers to rescue a force that by all rights should outnumber us a hundred to one if they've been hit really hard. We'll have no backup and only the weapons on our backs and in our hands…anybody got a problem with that?" Falcon asked and deliberately ignored Playboy's raising of his hand with relish. "Good, Snake Eyes do us a favor and come with us on this. We'll need you."  
  
Snake Eyes gave him a salute and Falcon felt extremely proud, also he had the slightest sensation that this wasn't going to be pure suicide as he originally suspected this would be.   
  
"YO JOE!" Demolition Derby shouted as the huge Interceptor-Tanks rolled from the dropping point and the commander of the armor division began rolling through Cobra Island foliage toward the Terror-Palace of Serpentor and victory. With a leaping Jump, Scarlet managed to get herself on board DD's tank as well.   
  
'God bless…may the force be with you…good luck.' Falcon thought to himself and started his run towards his goal, hoping he wouldn't be too late or just leading everyone to brutal demises.  
  
***  
  
The Baroness watched the destruction of the forces of Cobra Island with distinct and immensely pleasurable relish. The troops of Serpentor still wore the Cobra Hood but they were cut down like blades of grass and it was no small amount of enjoyment that she was able to take a machine gun to the fleeing troops as she rocketed down. The sensation of once again being feared, once again being the angel of death troops whispered of, the sensation of inflicting an iota of the pain and fear she'd suffered in prison was almost enough to make her lose control of her glider as she flew with her escort.  
  
"There you are." The Baroness licked her lips in relish as she saw the Terror-Palace of Serpentor and nearly laughed out loud to how ludicrous the building looked. It looked like Serpentor had chosen one of the mountains that had formed the island and built a Terror drome around it before filling numerous parts of the surrounding caves with guns and armor emplacements. It was fitting that the fool she had thought would lead Cobra to an Empire ruling over the planet would live in a cave like the vermin he is. God above, he even had surrounded the place with a moat!  
  
"Baroness, what should we do now?" One of the Cobra Commandoes to her side with his own rocket pack said. They were adequate enough troops and had shot down a few flight pods, which had dared attack her. Currently the Terror-palace of Serpentor was under it's own assault as Cobra Reborn pelted it with explosives and mild rocket fire. It would not be long until Serpentor's glorious castle was reduced to rubble and the shame of having once served that man was wiped away in a river of blood.  
  
"THERE!" the Baroness cried and pointed her laser pistol down at the ground as she spotted a familiar pair of figures. Xamot and Tomax were escaping in a boat across their little moat toward a Hum-vee that was waiting for them on the other side. The cowardly Crimson Guard members were no doubt fleeing a sinking ship like the rats they were.  
  
"COBRA!" the Baroness cried with the first real feeling since her rescue and threw a grenade into the troop transport where the driver screamed a brief moment before he died in flames. The Cobra Commandoes managed to snag both sets of twins from their boat nicely as well before bringing them before her. The sky was alit by fire and it was far too dangerous to hold the sort of trial the Baroness wanted but she had ceased caring and the sight of the two Corsicans now sporting goatees and still wearing identical uniforms was too delicious to not savor.  
  
"BARONESS!" they both gasped at the same time, clearly shocked that she was alive much less the bringer of their doom.  
  
"You cowardly fools! You honestly believe I would never have found you!" The Baroness was disgusted as she saw in the boat boxes of gold, paintings, and other transportable wealth. The Twins had been living in lives of luxury while she lived in darkness!  
  
"But I…" Tomax began, trying desperately to figure up an excuse.  
  
"It was Tomax! Tomax was the one who testified! I never mentioned you once!" Xamot did the unthinkable and betrayed his brother. The Baroness smiled, she always suspected that their brotherly love would only go so far.  
  
"Very well then, Xamot, I will give your brother his reward first." The Baroness smiled and shot Tomax in the chest. The scarred twin to his side then doubled over in agony with his brother as he felt the wound deep within him just as if he, not Tomax, had been shot. Xamot looked over at his brother's dead form in horror, as if he only now realized what he had done. The Baroness relished in her triumph then shot him in the head. She was pleased at least one of the twins had felt the pain of death twice.  
  
"My work here is done." The Baroness smiled.  
  
***  
  
July 13th, 1973  
  
The United States flag was being raised above the General Sherman Covert Ops Training Center. The fact this college for male and females seeking high risk, high combat positions in the U.S. military was located in Georgia struck the man known as Jonathan Sharp as the idea of some Northern commander's sick joke on military history, given there was hardly anything covert about the man's policies. It was lucky though that the false cadet had been transported here by his father who no doubt viewed the dear General's tactics, such as the burning Atlanta, to be the height of excellence for a prospective officer in Cobra.  
  
'Cobra….' The secret organization seemed to be a million miles away and it was almost impossible to believe that no one in the school had ever heard of it or would until it was time to strike down the nation they were nearly all going to end up serving. Still the slithering coils were entering business, government, military command, finance, and criminal enterprise with increasing grandeur under his father's fifty-year plan to conquer the world. Cobra Commander, whose Cobra-la name was nearly an unpronounceable word, which basically translated as "Snakes" after his noble house, had sent him here to make contact with military prospects and slowly persuade them to Cobra's point of view during education and his period of service in the United States military.  
  
"Hey are you awake?" Shana murmured, to his side, which meant the flag raising was over and he could cease his salute. General Sherman Academy was probably the only military academy in the world that was co-educational and treated the female and male groups as one. Were they not being trained in, what even Jonathan could call, the finest of military skills, and he had grown up with a pistol in his hand and to his head. He imagined the place would have been shut down long ago.  
  
"I imagine so." Jonathan said. He had been given the name as an identity for his instruction here and it had come equipped with a false background, social security number, and even a family that was impeccable, but all a lie by Cobra. The more he was addressed by the name, the more it came to become him and not just a disguise though.  
  
"Hmmph." Shana wrinkled her nose and Jonathan felt extreme shame in the deception he was performing. Liberalism aside it was still risking expulsion to date inside the campus, but he had fallen deeply in love with the woman. It was burning like Greek fire the walls of Byzantium, his desire to tell her the truth and abandon the charade he felt his service to Cobra had become. He had been attracted to her purity, sense of honor, and the fact she was the most passionate of all those present here, next to the years of cold cynicism he had grown into a man around. She had been attracted to the man who was, in a sense, completely out of time. Shana O'Hara had likened him more than once to a samurai or medieval knight in his formality and talk of honorable battle. He had other friends, his mission required it, but no one understood, even subconsciously, just what truly Jonathan was. Scarlet knew he was carrying some burden and had tried for the years they had known each other to get him to open to it. If he did he would destroy the very thing that would cut away his self-deception, however.  
  
"Rifle practice is still a half hour away. You want to sneak a peek at the schedule for tonight so we can get around Commandant Curuthers for a date? Knowing is half the battle." Scarlet whispered into his ear.  
  
"I'd like that a lot." John lowered his head.  
  
"I can see you can't get any more enthusiastic." Scarlet smirked. She'd grown up in a family of martial arts instructors with three older brothers and, from what Philip had heard, she had plenty of time to sharpen that razor wit as much as her punches.  
  
"No. No, it's fine really. I've had a lot on my mind lately." Jonathan said. He had learned to forget that he was a member of Cobra and for the time they'd been here he had become Jonathan Sharp from Kansas, instead of Special Operative 12# or a host of the numbers he'd been raised with since they'd forbidden him to be called by his mother's name for him. Now training was ending and Shana would go on, as would he, into the military proper. Yet he didn't want it to end.  
  
"Well I've…" Shana stopped and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, which said she didn't want to intrude. A warmth seemed to pass from Shana to Jonathan and clarity settled around his mind.  
  
"Shana..I'll catch up with you later. I have to go work some things out…I'll talk to you later."   
  
"Okay." Shana said. "It's not like half the things you do aren't odd…" she muttered as he passed and Jonathan nearly stopped her to apologize but he realized he needed to think through their next meeting and think through it well.  
  
Jonathan headed into his bunk and sat down before folding his head into his lap. 'I know what I must do.' The soldier thought. He wasn't sure how he would do it but he would ask her to come with him and be with him for the dawning of Cobra on the world. It was ridiculous and every fiber of his being screamed that it was ridiculous. He would control destiny if he had to and make her understand they were meant to be together and the patriotism she held would find a place in the new order.  
  
"Oh no." the agent returned. Underneath his pillow was a small envelope en-sealed with the Cobra hood. Inside were orders that recalled him from his mission of infiltration. The letter from his father was cold and to the point. It signaled that his time for him to return to Cobra's headquarters and take a field commission, their plan was accelerating.  
  
***  
  
July 13th, 2001  
  
The now Cobra Commander did not know why that particular part of his life came back as he flew circles around the Terror-palace seeking his foe and only occasionally took a sniper shot to kill one of the gunmen defending. It had been many years since she had left the G.I. team and she was probably now married to the commander of the team she fancied, General Duke, or the one called Snake Eyes. They were men of honor and not treacherous foes like she believed the organization of Cobra to be and rightly so, the Commander would say, if not for the fact he was now in command of men and women willing to give their lives for his cause.  
  
"YOU!" a voice called to him from below and the Commander spun through a torrent of laser fire toward the platform where the voice originated. Once he landed he removed his mask and cast it onto the ground before the form of Serpentor as he shot both of his traitor Crimson guards dead beside him. So fat with the pleasures of the flesh, neither had the skill to even aim and fire their weapons before they fell.  
  
"You are responsible for this outrage against my person!" Serpentor cried. "My army is perishing and I will have my pound of flesh from you for it."  
  
"SILENCE FOUL LIAR! IF YOU CARED AN OUNCE FOR YOUR ARMY YOU WOULD BE FIRST IN BATTLE AND LAST TO RETREAT!" the Commander screamed at the top of his lungs and grabbed at his power-spear. A weapon designed with the simplicity of the ancients, with the deadliness of modern technology.  
  
Serpentor reached for one of his genetically engineered cobras, creatures that were hard as steel but living. Much like the man before him, they were relics of Cobra-la's genetic abominations, which though he shared the blood of, but refused to mourn the memory of.  
  
"What dare you say? You dare mock my courage in my own palace! I shall cut you down to the base matter that formed you!" Serpentor said and the duel between the Lords of Cobra began.  
  
The battle was murderously fast and furious with the two melee weapons slamming against each other like the twin concepts of the ancient and the new struggling for supremacy that was taking place in the world around them. Serpentor's serpent caused the power-spear to spark with each strike struck against him.  
  
"You cannot stand against a man who has lived this entire world's history of war, from the days of burning fire in caves to splitting skulls with axes to eradicating civilizations with tactical weapons!" Serpentor snarled forcing all of his strength on his opponent's weapon in a locked duel. He was surprised then when the man met him with equal and distinctly inhuman strength in return.  
  
"It is the duty of all righteous conquerors to crush their foes before them like the dogs they are. You have proven yourself time and time again to be nothing but a butcher and Cobra was remade into nothing more than your bandits. Now in the name of the noble beast and what it stands for…I WILL EXECUTE YOU!" The Cobra Commander then flipped over Serpentor onto the stone ground and brought down his power spear, the weapon sparking as Serpentor blocked the deathblow from the near mad warrior.  
  
***  
  
Snake Eyes walked through the brush of Cobra Island with repeated slashes through the foliage using his katana, a use his ninja masters probably didn't intend, but a utilitarian one nonetheless. The slashes he made were soft and swift to cover up the noise they might make even as he looked frequently back to his "passengers" whom, even with the instructions he had passed on through Falcon, were making far too much noise for their own good.  
  
'It's a very good thing they have a war to distract anyone who might be listening.' Snake Eyes smiled underneath his mask. Unlike the other Joes he really had never stopped fighting in his time off and had spent the majority of his time in and out of monasteries between fighting, what he liked to call the "good fight" against tyranny embodied in Cobra. He had known, before the others, Cobra was returning and in a much deadlier form.  
  
"Great, I'm following a ninja into the brush." The one known as Icicle said and Snake eyes slapped her across the mouth, holding it. They were approaching the area they had confirmed was the battle ground and Snake Eyes knew by the sounds of battle that were far off in sound really meant that the destruction of the third attack group was almost finished. If it were up to Snake Eyes he would just abort the mission and be done with it, they knew what they were getting into when they made this attack. However he had orders and would at least confirm there were none alive before he left, it was the least he could do for soldiers who stood up against evil in their lives.  
  
"Lady, we have successfully eliminated the resistance on this side of the Island. The men request the opportunity to begin the charge on the forces of G.I. Joe rather than continue with the pre-arranged battle plan to destroy Serpentor's military dumps and village barracks." A Cobra soldier walked up towards a woman dressed in battle armor of some kind as he saluted. Snake Eyes parted the foliage a bit and prayed that the trainees behind him had enough sense not to make any noise or make any sudden move.  
  
"You long for combat with the forces of G.I. Joe?" the woman asked removing her helmet and revealing a very attractive woman in her late twenties. He was briefly reminded of Scarlet, due to the athleticism, lethality, and poise that was present in her form but shook that thought away. He had loved Scarlet from afar most of his life, since he'd met her but ever since he'd lost his voice and been disfigured he'd known that she deserved better than a man trapped in such a shell. Worse he knew he could never give her the life that she desired because he had resigned himself to a life of murder and war, love was contradictory to such a lifestyle.  
  
"They humiliated us, Ma'am. My father fought in Cobra and died fighting the Joes and to only know that victory had been snatched from his grasp time and time again with little hope of it ever returning. I want to show them that he did not die in vain. I want to spill their blood." The man said and Snake Eyes shook his head. Cobra was a cult and always had been, recruiting the disenchanted and providing them with false ideas about the glamour of war and revenge. He was an odd man to be saying so because Ninjas were nothing more than medieval wise guys really, but it was nature's way to teach through irony.  
  
"Then that is exactly why we are going to focus on the original battle plan. G.I. Joe's defeat will come in time but it will be on our terms and when they choose. You know the Commander views them as worthy foes and they will be treated as such accordingly. Bring forth the prisoners." The woman said and Snake Eyes surveyed the landscape to get an image of a group of about thirty Cobra commandoes with a few vehicles about, it was obvious the rest were covering sentry duty and probably hunting down the escapees before their next big push.  
  
Fourteen soldiers from what looked to be Britain, Canada, France, and even Germany were led at gunpoint with their hands on their heads, disarmed. Snake Eyes never liked soldiers who surrendered, but that was mainly because of their association with Cobra in his mind and Vietnam. He noticed Colonel Grant was among the soldiers who had given up and made a subtle look to Falcon before signaling in sign "Attack in thirty seconds. Get them out of there. Don't tell the team until your ready."  
  
Snake Eyes didn't like what he was facing but it would feel good to bring the stinging bite of justice to the side of the serpent again.  
  
***  
  
Shana O'Hara watched the progression of tanks through the foliage as the energy blasts from the Interceptor tanks blasted through the walls and defenses Serpentor erected as the HISS tanks were scattered and trouble-bubbles shot out of the air. While it was a good feeling knowing that her tax dollars hadn't been completely put to waste, it was also a disturbing feeling knowing you completely overmatched an enemy that they had practically no chance of beating them. She much preferred a straight one on one fight with an opponent who at least had a chance to fight back.  
  
"Okay, Tanks I want you to ignore the initial battle plan. We're getting chewed up by Cobra in the skies and we need to take down the citadel hard and fast." The newly promoted Sergeant Major Demolition Derby said.  
  
"I don't think you should do that." Scarlet said watching the troops following behind the tanks blasting everything around them as they fought.   
  
"Duke trusts my judgment and I'm relaying my orders back to him. The original plan was for a steady take of the island. This is much quicker…." DD stopped for a second as the interceptor stopped in mid-roll and he ordered the entire group to stop as the two tanks beside him shuddered similarly. Large trails of black smoke were emerging from the bottoms of the tanks as Scarlet saw their treads were completely destroyed despite having the best plate in the world.  
  
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this." She said sardonically, guessing what just happened.   
  
"Okay, so there's a mine field below us. Not like anyone got hurt." DD shrugged his shoulders guiltily before Scarlet remembered who was in charge. "Let's get in another tank. I'm not Serpentor, I know actually something about fighting. We're handling this MY way from this point on." It was infuriating someone could make a mistake like this. He'd even ignored the established attack route in order to get there faster. Worse, she'd let him.  
  
"You better hope you do something here that makes up for this." Scarlet murmured as she started shouting and the remembrance of what it was like to be a G.I. Joe leader flooded back into her. Getting on call to Duke she confirmed a new attack root and prepared the assault according to expectations of resistance and got her team ready. They were not only going to level the citadel to the ground they were going to take Serpentor himself and take him alive.  
  
Comments?  
  



	5. The Fall of Cobra Island

Flint and Lady Jaye were surrounded by a bunch of men brought to Cobra Island by Cobra, survived by Cobra, and were constantly surrounded by Cobra and it's propaganda while wielding Cobra energy weapons. It was somewhat surprising that they were as amicable as they turned out to be leading them back to their village.  
  
"You Joe!" a Chinese man cried waving his fist with a half bitter smile.  
  
"Flint, we're you aware that we had a fan club here on Cobra Island?" Lady Jaye asked.  
  
"Maybe if you give them an autograph they'll put away the guns." Flint muttered, under his breath.  
  
"It's alright. My friends here don't speak much English, but they have the general idea your members of G.I. Joe, which is supposed to be an extremely dirty word around here. But only is to members of the Coil Crime syndicate which passes for Cobra. Though from the looks of things it appears that whoever is waving that banner today isn't too happy with their calling themselves that." The leader of the group, a tall muscular black man with an assault rifle, said with a half smile.  
  
"And who exactly are your friends, and you for that matter?" Flint questioned as he noticed the grass hut village had been turned into something of a fortress with heavy trenches dug, barbed wire laid-out and everyone, including the women, holding guns.  
  
"Me? I'm with the CIA. I've been down here so long I was pretty damn sure that everyone here had forgotten I even existed. It appears, since nobody bothered to inform me there was a massive assault on the island coming up, I was right." The man said pulling out a cigarette and lighting it up. "My brothers here are mostly the members of the resistance that tried to overthrow Serpentor about twelve years ago after Cobra lost the Terror-Drome and about half it's numbers, but same as Cuba, it was crushed and we had to lie low. However, given everything is suddenly lit up like the Fourth of July, me and my amigos decided to take out the local Cobra barracks and see what we could do for you." The man then offered his hand to Flint, who blinked just the slightest bit before shaking his head. Lady Jaye was on the verge of laughing her head off at her husband's confusion.  
  
"Abraham Rook." The man said while the rest behind them repeated their own names, they were a motley bunch and quite a few of them were over the hill.  
  
"Just call me Flint." Flint shook the man's hand before looking at Lady Jaye.  
  
"Yeah I've heard of you, though I'd have thought you'd be way past combat age by this point." Abe gave a look that told Flint he was only teasing but it was obvious the Colonel didn't much care for it.  
  
Lady Jaye then looked around and saw that children were being huddled, along with the elderly, into the center of the village where holes had been dug to hide in. "Where exactly did all these people come from?" Cobra Island had been the creation of a volcano that had barely stopped erupting before Cobra Commander had bribed his way into getting accepted as a nation.  
  
"The Slave trade mostly. Xamot and Tomax are heavy hitters in the Drug, Weapons, and Mercenary rackets, given they can't do much legitimate business anymore. Still in order to grow the heroine and cocaine they need farmers so whether kidnapped from their homes or lured here on false promises before having a gun pointed at their heads, they all ended up here more or less unwillingly. As you can imagine it did not endear them to the organization as a whole." Abraham then handed Flint a cigarette before Jaye refused, it was a disgusting filthy habit. Flint put away his as well and Lady Jaye was grateful, she had spent years beating it out of him and he wasn't going to start again.  
  
"Well, we're part of a joint effort to take Serpentor out with a few of our allies, but it's proving a little harder than we originally thought." Flint shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the wound on his arm.  
  
"Well, it's about to get a whole lot harder." Abe smiled as he reloaded his pistol.  
  
"How's that?" Lady Jaye asked.  
  
"Well, Miss Jaye…forgive me, it's the javelins." Abraham said, pointing at what was a rather large signal to her identity on her back.  
  
"Mrs. Jaye, now." Flint corrected.  
  
"Not for long if you keep throwing grenades at your feet." LJ said, looking very cross at her husband.  
  
"Mrs. Jaye, well we've got a little radar commandeered from the recently departed in the bunkers and well a group of those new Cobras with the shiny toys are about to march into this here village. It ain't going to be pretty." Abraham smiled.  
  
"So let me get this straight…" Flint pointed a gloved finger at Thomas then began counting the number of armed people who looked like they could remotely fight and that wasn't many. "You want us to…"  
  
Lady Jaye cut in, "Work some Joe magic."  
  
"On these here folks and more or less hold an entire invading force at bay until they give up and leave your village here alone?" Flint said blinking and biting down hard.  
  
Abraham shrugged his shoulders then gave a thoroughly evil smile "Absolutely. Do you think that's going to be a problem for the mighty G.I. Joe organization's best soldiers?" The man then began wrapping a package of grenades around a bullet proof vest while the rest of the soldiers put on bandoliers and other suits that made them heavily armed(,) but still undernourished and ill-trained it seemed.  
  
Flint gave a half smile and Lady Jaye a full one before she patted her husband on the back. "It shouldn't be a problem at all." Flint said as he took a new power pack for his rifle.  
  
***  
  
Snake Eyes moved silently through the Cobra forces with exceptional stealth, speed, and dexterity for the operation he only had a scant amount of time to perform. Cart wheeling and jumping from tank to jeep, Snake Eyes set the charges as the seconds he had left whittled slowly down to zero and he leapt on top of the largest most visible point in the area. The Cobras were still preparing for their attack on Serpentor's armory and the leader of the group had turned it into an impromptu interrogation session, heavy on the slapping and pointed guns, but no torture. If Snake Eyes had said it once he'd say it again, the Cobras were never heavy on the Geneva Convention.  
  
"What is the size of your force, Colonel? What are your objectives?" the woman slapped the British commander repeatedly before he, rather nobly, but stupidly, spit in her face.  
  
Snake Eyes was shocked that he didn't have to wait very long for the Cobra forces to notice him, as the woman immediately fired her pistol, which was followed by the tell tale blue laser lights of her troops. The bolts were uncomfortably close and with his pistols drawn and arms crossed he found they didn't manage to penetrate Cobra body armor either.   
  
'Oh well if good old fashioned Kreagan-seven energy bolts won't get a Cobra…' Snake eyes ducked into a roll as the time bombs detonated behind him and sent the snakes spiraling into the ground with their hands over their heads.   
  
"YO JOE!" the battle-cry was sounded by Falcon, as the air above Snake Eyes filled with red laser blasts. Unfortunately, some nearly took his head off and Snake Eyes was reminded that Colonel Falcon wasn't the most sensible Joe to begin with and a decade out of combat or so probably hadn't helped his shooting in real time. The new rawhides weren't exactly the best the Joes had to offer either, one was actually shooting something that looked like fire-extinguisher fluid but froze better than liquid nitrogen.  
  
'Not so fast.' Snake Eyes thought, kicking a Cobra trooper, who had been playing dead, in the face and knocking the gun from the viper's hands. The ninja then punched the man out cold onto the ground. Snake Eyes wished he could scream at the top of his lungs that they had to get the prisoners and get the hell out of there before they were cut to ribbons by Cobra reinforcements, but he had long since learned to stop trying. Snake Eyes would never be a leader of men, so he just tried to be the nastiest, most cunning fighter that had ever been born or trained. Throwing a pair of sais from his knee wraps, they landed into the side of Cobra laser rifles which exploded in the troop's hands. To their credit, the prisoners grabbed what Cobra weapons they could from the fallen and tried to aid in their own rescue, but in the crossfire three were already dead.  
  
"JOES RETREAT! WE'VE GOT WHAT WE CAME FOR!" Falcon said, pointing a pistol at the eyepiece of one of the armored Cobra Commandoes and actually hitting it point blank. The Green Beret was better than it seemed when it came to fighting and Snake Eyes gave him credit where credit was due.  
  
'Finally! Took you long enough, Falcon. A surprise attack only is a surprise for the first second that someone's shooting at you.' Snake Eyes thought, throwing a grenade toward the oncoming troops as he was shot through the shoulder and screamed silently.  
  
"Let's get out of here!" Punch Card yelled, echoing the obvious sentiment as he gave covering fire with his assault rifle.  
  
Snake Eyes stumbled then to the forest as he fired still with his good arm.  
  
***  
  
Anya Dilsynian fell to the ground in a roll as the G.I. Joe forces emerged from their attacking point and proceeded to fight with her stunned troops. Anya had never fought with Cobra during the time they were mortal foes with the American fighting force, but in her six years with Cobra, she had fought in enough private battles and personal campaigns that she could recognize skill where she saw it. It annoyed her that they weren't having better reaction time, but she accepted the responsibility herself, she should have made sure the area was more secure than she had assumed before interrogating the commander of the invading army they had captured.  
  
"DON'T JUST STAND THERE! KILL THEM!" Anya said, tumbling into a battle formation and landing a laser bolt shot into the shoulder of the soldier, Snake Eyes, whom she recognized from data docs. It was a great pity because she had been aiming for his head with that particular shot, but she had the unfortunate problem of having to make an effort to move out of the way of the G.I. Joe energy bolts. She had little difficulty doing so, she was Cobra's Fallen Angel, which was a title that meant to her deception, skill, beauty, and great power.  
  
'You.' Fallen Angel thought, catching the eyes of one of the new G.I. Joes, whom she recognized from the training regiment of the Death-Vipers. The agent had shown spectacular skill and she had recommended the agent for counter-intelligence and espionage duties among the reformed military force. It was almost enough to conduce her to laughter that the very person she had trained would be involved in her first mission against her. Breaking eye contact, the Crimson Guards woman knew the agent would deliberately miss all shots against living Cobra and with a smile watched the traitor move away to give her true commander a perfect shot at one of the G.I. Joes, which Anya took with relish.  
  
***  
  
Thomas Seraphim clutched his chest as the laser bolt penetrated the armor he was wearing and struck him in his stomach. The thirty three year old former preacher was only glad that he had taken it pushing away that annoying punk, Playboy.   
  
"CREED!" Playboy shouted, grabbing the man as he fired with his other arm into the Cobras coming forward. They'd recovered eleven of the POW's the Cobras had captured and he didn't want to lose anyone else.  
  
"Oh, just leave me here, you stupid young pup! This is war and I'm not going to waste my life just so you can blow yours." Creed shouted through the immense pain that was wracking his body.  
  
"Oh be quiet, old man. I never was one for taking orders." Playboy said, dragging the man back into the woods as he wondered whether or not they could stop the blood flow from the wound soon enough to make it worth it. "Nobody has ever given me anything before, Creed, that I didn't deserve and nobody is going to start now." Kyle shouted as a laser bolt slammed into the tree just beside him while cover fire from Falcon allowed him to move into the forest again with a few smoke grenades from Snake Eyes covering their way.  
  
'So help me God, if we end up getting caught by Cobra because that stupid silent ninja can't think of an escape plan in a pinch I'm going to make sure I'm the one who kills him.' Playboy murmured as the dark foliage of Cobra Island filled with more smoke and laser blasts over his head and beside his feet.  
  
***  
  
"Can you not feel the power of my will overwhelming you, foul dog?" Serpentor screamed, slamming himself upward as he brought the serpent staff on the ground of the Terror Palace's floor, which cracked like stone glass before the Cobra Emperor's strength. The battle between the Reborn Cobra and the Cobra mercenaries was dying down as the G.I. Joe tanks began to roll through the brush and pounded the palace with explosives. The Reborn Cobra troops had managed to eliminate enough of the defenses and murder many of the troops inside that the American fighting force had free reign to reduce it rubble.  
  
"All I feel is the imminent taste of victory, Serpentor." The new Commander smiled as he brought his staff toward the Emperors skull only to find himself locked in another test of strength. It did not matter if the Terror Palace was brought down around either warrior's ears in his mind, he would gladly go to perdition with Serpentor's throat in his hands but he intended to win this battle cleanly without cowardly leaving the clone to his death.  
  
"It is a pity I never knew you, young warrior, in my rule over Cobra. Despite your shameful stealing of my moniker, you fight well and would have made an excellent general in my war to bring order to the galaxy." Serpentor laughed and kneed the son of the original Commander in the gut before tossing him in a roll against the wall behind him.  
  
"STEALING? The ultimate bandit dares speak of theft before the rightful heir to the kingdom he stole? Look upon me and know that I am the Hamlet to your Claudius. The princes in the tower to your Richard. The…" Serpentor took advantage of his opponent's sputtering to slam his snake-staff into the man's chest before ramming onto the back of his neck and throwing it in a strangle hold as the Cobra bit down.  
  
"You talk much and did little. That is your epitaph." Serepentor smiled, slamming his foot on the man's chest.  
  
***  
  
The village of El Ray was now so sufficiently rigged that Flint was absolutely sure if Cobra attacked they'd at least be able to put up a fairly good fight before they went down. That is, of course, unless the forces of Cobra were packing enough firepower that the small defenses they had would be completely overwhelmed and they'd be crushed in a few seconds.   
  
"I really hate situations like this." Flint said frowning. He had never had a problem, personally, with firepower but always had preferred to take on superior stuff with his own hands. It had probably been the reason he had been passed over for a Generalship. The command didn't like the idea of a solution that depended on one man's expertise on the field as opposed to dozens.  
  
"Oh, be quiet, Flint. We've been in far worse than this." Lady Jaye said honestly, preparing her javelin as they heard the sounds of moving vehicles, which signaled the dawning arrival of Cobra.  
  
"Yeah but I wasn't exactly too keen on those other times, either." Flint murmured as the BATS Mark 5 emerged with their lasers moving at assault weapon's rates and tearing through everything in their path.  
  
"FLINT, PUNCH IT!" Jaye shouted as Flint jumped back with a ripcord in hands, triggering the first of the traps they'd set up.  
  
The Bats Mark V took aim and ticked off their names as a net of wire-mesh wrapped them up with mines tied to them and the machines exploded in a deafening blast. The air then filled with more laser bolts as the Cobra troops proper and a tank started rolling into the village.  
  
"Okay part one worked out fairly well." Lady Jaye said, throwing her net javelin on a group of Cobra soldiers even as the resistance covered her.  
  
"It's not the first part that I'm worried about. It's getting to part two!" Flint said falling back as the laser fire grew more intense. The Cobra force sent to crush this village's garrison was small but it was intense and well trained.  
  
***  
  
"Do you have any idea of what's exactly going on, Bob?" Cobra Coil guardsman Samuel Prescott said. The man didn't do much in the way of fighting and truth be told couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, but if you were willing to accept a paycheck from Xamot and Tomax and wear a uniform in front of Serpentor with a gun, you could go far in the organization.  
  
"No idea in hell. As near as I can tell, the governments cracking down on us and we're all about to die." Robert Samson sighed. He was, unlike Samuel, a cold-blooded killer and was still wanted in the United States and Europe for five shooting deaths and a series of bank robberies. Absolutely nothing phased the man.  
  
"Uh huh. Shouldn't we be getting out of the Terror Palace then?" Samuel suggested, moving his shoulders uneasily as they guarded the inner corridor and the sounds outside took on a whole entirely different and dark meaning to the man's inexperienced ears.  
  
"Nah. It'd take a nuke to pry us out of this place and you know the drill. They surround us…call for our surrender. U.N. types debate endlessly and, unless a bunch of Jedi get sent, nothing gets done. We're in the safest place in the Terror-Palace, don't worry." Bob sighed, twirling his rifle.  
  
"Yeah I guess your right. I'd personally rather be here than take my chances outside after all." Samuel smirked before he found a rope wrapping around his neck and Bob's. A second later they're heads were bashed together and both fell onto the ground, out cold.  
  
"A wise ninja master once said to me that the man who is weakest is the man who is safest." Scarlet smirked, stepping over the two fallen Cobras as she went through the ventilation shaft and watched Tunnel Rat, Demolition Derby, and the rest of her picked team come down.  
  
"Man, I thought it was only in movies you could go through those things without someone hearing and shooting you." Demolition Derby blinked banging on it a bit before Scarlet smacked him in the back of the head.  
  
"They will come and shoot you if they hear us. Now let's get a move on." Scarlet ordered, lifting up her crossbow and beginning a run.  
  
"It's all about air conditioning. The Cobras like central air so they have the entire place lined with ventilation shafts that go right to the generators for this place." Tunnel Rat got an evil look on his face and he checked his watch as he ran "Twenty minutes. My boys have already got the charges planted to make sure your little tank division is the most completely useless assault force on the planet."  
  
Scarlet sighed. "If you're not busy enough bragging about what sorts of troops you've been producing, Major, I'd like you to go that way." She pointed down the left side of a three way hall as the air filled with Cobra blasts and she ducked into a roll while Demolition Derby and Tunnel Rat returned fire at the Cobra mercs. Scarlet herself followed the directions of the controller they'd taken out and headed right.  
  
"Where are you going?" Demolition Derby shouted, firing repeatedly at the Cobras, who broke into a full retreat as alarms started blaring throughout the Terror Palace of Serpentor.  
  
"Where else? Where a woman's touch is needed! You just make sure your able to cover me!" Scarlet cried back as she picked up her crossbow and shot smoke arrows down at oncoming troops that immediately had them gagging and clutching their eyes. The paralyzing gas dissipated a second later and she broke not a single step running over them toward the rooftop of the Terror Palace where the Emperor of Cobra was waiting for her.  
  
"Oh great." Scarlet saw two silver armored Cobra troopers standing over about eight dead Coil mercenaries.   
  
"A G.I. Joe!" one shouted, lifting a X-25B repeating laser rifle.  
  
"She's come for the Commander!" the other said lifting his own.  
  
Then they spoke in unison, "KILL HER!"  
  
"Oh geez." Scarlet jumped up and grabbed the lighting system as the energy blasts sailed under her and she breathed heavily.  
  
'What can get worse?' Scarlet thought to herself as she swung into them feet first before grabbing one's dropped rifle and dispatching both.  
  
'I guess I'll find out.' Scarlet mused as she opened the door to the roof Serpentor was awaiting her on. The sounds of her cover fire were not far behind but she defiantly needed to make sure Serpentor was taken down or at least get a good look at what sort of opposition was guarding him.  
  
***  
  
Serpentor's laughter echoed through the Terror Palace as the rain forest and swamp land that covered his island burned in gigantic fires that were sweeping most of the island. Every last plane at his airport bases had been destroyed and all four of Serpentor's ports were captured. His defeat was absolutely certain and Serpentor had no desire but to die fighting this day but he would go to meet the great lord of evil with a smile knowing that the impudent dolt that had tried to replace him as Lord of Cobra was dead at his hands.  
  
"The poison you feel right now should be entering your heart and unlike normal Cobra venom will cause it to explode quite painfully I can assure." Serpentor said down to the man whose chest breathed slower under his boot. Cobra Commander then grabbed Serpentor by the leg and slammed him against the wall of the Terror Palace's roof entrance with such force that several teeth were knocked from the dictator's mouth.   
  
"My father's race evolved from cold blooded reptilian beings and while coincidence or divine plan…" The Cobra Commander did not stop beating Serpentor's face in with inhuman blows as he carried on, "they evolved along a similar enough path that they're race could interbreed with their cousins the humans, you should have known a child of Cobra -la would not die with the bite of a serpent."  
  
Weakened, scarred, beaten and bloody the man called Jonathan Sharp put Serpentor's throat in a vice like grip as he forced the Cobra Emperor's left arm behind him with force enough to break it. "ARRGHHHHHHH!" Serpentor screeched as he suffered pain for the first time in many years and found it good.  
  
"I misjudged your cowardice, Serpentor, and your fighting spirit. While I will never forgive you for what you did to my father…the true Cobra Commander….I will send you to whatever gods you worship with the only gift I can. I give you a warrior's death." The Commander cried then snapped the neck of Serpentor before dropping his dead body onto the ground with a thud.  
  
"Johnathan!" A voice said behind him, like a ghost from the past, immediately cut off the triumphant Commander's ability to breath.  
  
"Shana." Sharp said, turning his gaze toward her.   
  
Her look of horror and shock was enough that Sharp was able to take his eyes off from her. She was looking at his uniform and she looked at the eyes which were not human, but had been grown in Doctor Mindbender's laboratory. Shana O'Hara was still wearing the uniform of a G.I. Joe and though it had been decades she still enchanted with the elegant poise of a killer, as she was lifting up her crossbow to no doubt order his surrender. Johnathan Sharp could not judge her reaction; horror, fear, betrayal, shock, affection for an old lover or some strange mixture of all of them at once?  
  
"SURRENDER NOW YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Scarlet shouted then lifted up her crossbow as her eyes flashed and her finger began to squeeze harder around the trigger for emphasis and sheer lack of control.  
  
"I think not." Jonathan leapt down even as the arrow came sailing at him with a sharp movement.  
  
"COBRA! WE HAVE WHAT WE CAME FOR! RETREAT!" Jonathan cried into his personal com as his jetpack shot him into the air away from the Terror Palace. It was true that Serpentor had been slain and from the looks of things his troops had proven more than a match for G.I. Joe and her allies let alone the pathetic defenses Serpentor had erected.   
  
'Yet on some level I am certain I have lost something very precious.'  
  
***  
  
Abraham Rook, codenamed: Infiltrator, watched men he'd known for more than a decade, gunned down by the Cobra forces once they breached the traps Lady Jaye and Flint had made for his little party. It was kind of funny in a way, that the most elite terrorist organization in the world would have quite of a few of their number tossed a dozen yards into some big oak by the old snare trick but there it was.  
  
"Well, I'm all out of ideas, how about you?" Lady Jaye said as the last of the defense ditches erected around the village of El Ray were crossed and it was now forty seven or so Cobras versus two G.I. Joe and a man who definitely should have been in Black Ops as opposed to this hellhole. Lady Jaye briefly thought about her daughters and looked at Flint who had the same look in his eye, they'd come a long way to die at Cobra's hands and leaving them would be their biggest regret.  
  
"Well, we could all sing." Abraham offered as he thought about "Swing Low sweet Chariot" as he pulled the pin of a grenade and saw the absolute weirdest thing.  
  
"What the…." Flint watched in shock from behind a water barrel, pistol in hand.   
  
The Cobras were retreating en masse, in an orderly fashion with a bunch of cover shots being fired behind them, but no real attempt to hit anybody. While Abraham was the first to admit that the Joes were very talented, he was rather reluctant to believe they were shaking in terror at the realization they were facing Lady Jaye and Flint.  
  
"Their Commander must have ordered a retreat." Jaye explained. "I've seen it happen quite a lot before…though usually it involves a lot less property damage and a lot more screaming like children by them." Lady Jaye couldn't stop from bursting out laughing in relief.  
  
"Whatever it is I'm going to get a hold of Duke and make sure it's going to keep happening. You go tell the villagers in the back, Abraham, to keep tight. Just because they're leaving now doesn't mean they won't return in a few minutes or come back around the other way." Flint gestured as he went to the radio in the village.  
  
"You got it and by the way. Since my current job is pretty much over. You think I could put you two down for some kind of reference?" Abe smiled at Lady Jaye who frowned with her arms crossed back at him.  
  
***  
  
Shana O'Hara barely managed to make it out of the Terror Palace before it's generators exploded and it had collapsed on itself. The destruction of the fortress signaled the end of Cobra's reign over the island and from the reports she could barely hear over the shouts and cheering, the rest of Serpentor's army was surrendering as the other Cobra force was retreating in full force.   
  
'Jonathan Sharp.' Shana blinked and found herself needing to sit down even as the victory felt like a distant reality, like something on television. Jonathan had been there before her and while it had been…she couldn't even count the years…she recognized the man's face and bearing anywhere. His voice was burned into her memory but instead of poetry and loyalty, words like Cobra Commander's son and a warrior's death before the crack of Serpentor's neck were in her head.  
  
'I've known traitors before. I shouldn't take it hard.' Scarlet shrugged her shoulders as she tried to shake away the thoughts that included, to her surprise, relief that he hadn't died all those years ago. She also knew he was the leader of the new Cobras and that was shocking enough to snap her back into reality.  
  
"Scarlet. You've got a call on the radio from General Duke." One of her privates said and she managed to get the call despite her confusion.  
  
"Scarlet. The Cobras are gone and we're finishing our sweep of the area. I'm just doing a check to see what the state of everyone's forces is." Conrad Hauser's words were reassuring as Scarlet did a brief once over her forces.  
  
"We're mostly intact though from looks of things we've lost about five armor and about twenty in men. Listen, Duke, I've got something I'm going to need to talk to you about…"  
  
Scarlet had dealt with a lot of emotional angst in her life from having a person she deeply admired permanently destroy his voice box and face to save her, to losing friends and loved one's in war, to the betrayal of her husband whom she personally hoped was rotting somewhere in a ditch currently. However, Sharp was an old wound that felt like it had been ripped open with gigantic fists and it left her shaking. Had he spent the past twenty years in the service of Cobra? If so, why? Was he really the son of that madman? She had then been a good judge of character and remembered him as a man of strong moral convictions and a very anachronistic sense of propriety and duty. It had been that very passion she had considered leaving the service to marry him years before she actually would for a man who hadn't been worth it. It wasn't right or fair that someone she had been that close to and whom had shared in her most intimate secrets would fighting for the enemy!  
  
'I've missed something here. I have to have.' Scarlet thought. Going over the battle from the attack on the guards to those last seconds before Sharp took off in her head over and over again. It took her a second to come back to reality to realize Duke had been silent for some time. "Duke?"  
  
"I'm sorry, Scarlet, but I was occupied. We're getting the casualty estimates now from Falcon for the U.N. troops and they're enormous. Cobra really did a number on them. Listen I don't want to talk about this here on a public line. If you have anything to say you should probably tell it to me personally. The Patriot should be docked with the island in an hour, meet me there." Duke said over the Comm. System and she smiled.  
  
"You got it. Your not going to believe it anyway." Scarlet said before handing it back to her communications officer. She didn't honestly believe it all herself, truth be told. The memories she had were very precious to her and they were now stinging against her soul rather than giving her comfort, that was an attack she had never wanted to experience again.  
  
'I'm going to find you Jonathan and I'm going to find out what exactly your doing and then I'm….' she didn't know what she was going to do and merely got up from the radio and went back to commanding the attack group, she couldn't think about it now or she'd go mad she was certain.  



	6. Preparing for Counterstrike

July 15, 2001  
  
2:31 p.m.  
  
Conrad Hauser gathered the G.I. Team into the conference hall as he went over the situation in his head about a dozen times, trying to figure out an angle which wouldn't needlessly endanger all of his men, but the facts were staring him in the face.   
  
"I'm going to hate myself after all this." Duke said though his teeth.  
  
The Brigadier General stood in front of his men and looked at his brother, who was wearing his Colonel's uniform proudly. He'd been given the bronze star for his efforts on Cobra Island and Duke had never been more proud of his younger brother. The man was the head of the G.I. Joe team now though and he'd been briefed before everyone else with as much seriousness as General Hawk used to brief him. Duke didn't like to think about his brother's reaction to the news he'd given him. Aside from calling Duke's plan crazy, he hadn't much liked the information they'd discovered on Cobra either and questioned its' validity.  
  
'I'd question it too, but I'm not going to call Shana a liar.' Duke thought as he looked over the G.I. Joes, old and new, along with a few carefully selected "advisors" from the United Nations Coalition, which had been drastically reduced in size by attacks and the General privately informing them that Cobra was either dealt with in small teams or one might as well gun down one's own troops for the corpses they'd make of them. There were quite a few faces, which were in mourning. Ace, Clutch, and Stryker had all been killed in the attack on Cobra Island and it had hit them all pretty hard. They had no time for sorrows though as the world was entering its' second week completely deprived of most of it's leaders while Cobra did what it pleased.  
  
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm here to talk to you about the attack on Cobra Island, the final results of it, the information we were able to pull from it and the other sources we'd been in contact with since then." The groans and general muttering Duke heard were disrespectful, but completely justified. Serpentor had been the slime of humanity for much of Duke's military career and he didn't regret that he and his own private army had been sent to prison or the morgue but the entire attack had left them wide open for a flank from the real parties responsible for the world-wide government kidnappings. The oddest thing was not a single one of those snakes had been taken alive out of the thirty-seven who'd been killed in the altercation. "You all know about Ace, Clutch, and Quick Kick's deaths and the loss it is to the Joe team and the world at large…" Quick Kick's death hit Duke especially hard because the man had gone on to have a life as a youth center manager well away from the military. "However the other dead include a nearly three hundred and fifty United Nations Coalition and regular U.S. soldiers. This is opposed to ninety nine percent of captured or slain Coil army militia who numbered three thousand at our last estimates. The operation freed thirteen thousand enslaved civilians and ended one of the biggest pipelines of terrorist activity and drugs into the world today. We should be proud of that."  
  
Duke cleared his throat and was pleased to notice that some bare traces of smiles had begun to emerge on his teammate's faces. He was glad to tell them that their suffering had not been for nothing. "We also have received valuable information about the organization we are entitling Cobra Reborn, for lack of a better name at this point. We've faced them in combat and have a good estimate of their technology; which includes personalized battle armor, almost full AI BATS, some sort of invisibility cloak, which they seem to be only able to use when not engaged in battle, and finally a form of magnetism based kinetic field which, until overloaded, will absorb most of the punishment we can dish out. This is all top technology and it's obvious that the Snakes are better armed this time around, but more importantly they have better training and talent too. Whatever they've been up to these past thirteen years, it's not been picking up any man who wants to fight for pay but crack shots and fanatics….they showed it on Cobra Island and we took a beating for it." Duke flipped on a projector and images from the battle were slid through. Finally the image rested on a military academy graduate in his mid-twenties.  
  
"This picture is of Jonathan Sharp, a covert ops trainee who disappeared on his first mission into the Ukraine with fifteen other operatives of which twelve were never seen again. This picture is extremely out of date and before the original G.I. team was assembled but your looking at the new Cobra Commander." Duke slid to a new slide, which showed an artist's representation of what Scarlet saw. The man's eyes were his most telling feature. His eyes were like a viper's. It personally gave Duke the creeps and only a few things did that including metal masks, hoods, people throwing snake's into his chest, and people turning into snakes.   
  
"That's the new Cobra Commander? How come we haven't heard of this guy before?" Flint questioned, obviously more than a little irritated. Duke admitted he probably would be too if he had been on Cobra Island when the new Cobras had attacked.  
  
"We've managed to get a fairly wide paper trail from the African sub-continent where he supported several of the local governments currently in power to getting there, South America as well, plus the Baltic revolutions and Chec rebels in Russia. He has a taste for legitimate causes, so it was hard to find the typical Cobra slash and burn that would have tipped off the CIA…or so I've heard. In any case, we're trying to find bases in the regions and see if we can trace the supply armament shipments that we know would have been needed to outfit this group. Our agents currently believe for some time he's had support of insiders in Russia, and even the United States for high technology usage and factory assembly. It's more than likely that they've even had access to space platforms and the guys at the lab already have me worried about satellite missiles and God knows any number of other things floating above us now." Duke shook his head in half-disbelief. This was not the type of report he liked to give.   
  
"Duke, where exactly have my tax dollars been going for the last decade?" Lady Jaye clasped her hands together and asked a very good question.  
  
"I'm not sure, Lady Jaye. However, from the profile we've got of this man, he's going to accelerate his attacks very soon and he's likely to come after us. Especially as payback for Cobra's previous defeats." Duke grit his teeth, three friends were already in the ground. "I strongly advise you all to remember this man is like Cobra Commander and Serpentor, completely insane with unpredictability definitely on his side. Thus, we have to be a little unpredictable." Duke said this mainly to the new recruits but he also was now to the point of the speech he really hated and he had to prepare the Joes for what he was going to do.  
  
"Good evening, G.I. Joe. It's always a pleasure to see how time whittles away even the best recruits." The voice came from the back of the room and Duke looked down at his papers while Gung Ho sat up and had to be held back by Flint and Dial-tone to avoid punching the man in the face. Several others, from Shipwreck to Lady Jaye, were half out of their seats as well. Standing there, arrogant as ever, was an older but still well built Zartan with face paint restored and his handcuffs being removed by the M.P.s.  
  
"Some analysis of the attacks Cobra conducted revealed some familiar faces who managed to avoid getting put away for life in prison…" Duke began as the slides he clicked on to show Buzzer directing a group of similarly dressed slime.  
  
"Unlike others." Zartan bemoaned in the dark room and Duke had a wicked urge to turn up the lights. Zartan had been indicted for countless acts of terrorist activity and nine counts of murder, which Duke had testified to. He had almost been disappointed when Zartan managed to avoid the electric chair.  
  
"And from what we can tell they've formed a new Dreadnoks group somewhere in the United States except much larger and missing their charter member for 'moral guidance'." Duke smiled at Zartan who was clearly irritated. Duke hated Cobra Commander, Destro, and Serpentor but they were all crazy in his mind and, to a certain extent, unable to be held accountable for their actions. Zartan, on the other hand, was just a mercenary and a traitor and he invoked more scorn than the others ever could. "At my recommendation, in exchange for commuting the rest of his sentence, Zartan has agreed to lead us to his people and their new hideout."  
  
"Forgive me, General, for questioning you on this…" Falcon began "But if Zartan has been rotting behind bars for the past decade and hasn't been deemed valuable enough for Cobra to send two Vipers and a row boat to try and rescue him. What exactly makes you think he'll be of any use in finding out where any of Cobra's bases are?" Duke's little brother crossed his arms and looks with a suspicious gaze at the Dreadnok commander.  
  
"Insolent….just because I wasn't chosen to be rescued by the arrogant snob currently in command of Cobra doesn't mean I'm completely without my resources Joe. My sister, Zarana, and I were in contact just before she was rescued from her latest sentence. It was our initial plan that I would be broken out soon after she was, but apparently their dear commander forbid it." Zartan said with a sneer as several of the G.I. Joe team obviously found that extremely funny.  
  
"Honor among thieves, Zartan." Duke said simply.  
  
"It's honor among family, Duke. In any case my sister gave me precise enough instructions to reach their base without too much difficulty and in exchange for my freedom from the series of brightly lit hells you've shuffled me through, I will let you have them all." Zartan stared at the screen of Buzzer with contempt. "I also want to remind you, my sister is free to go after this as well."  
  
"That's presuming you can keep her out of trouble, Zartan. I'd like nothing more than to make sure both of you get hauled back up the river." Duke pointed at Zartan who simply nodded. It was a shame about Zarana and, sexism aside, Duke had always felt she'd been more goaded into Zartan's life than anything else. Still there wasn't much use crying over it, given a chance to start anew she'd wasted it and had been in and out of prison since Cobra's defeat at Cobra-La.  
  
"I'll make sure we'll never see each other again once this is over, Duke. You can guarantee it." Zartan curled his lip at the General with a sneer.  
  
***  
  
July 15, 2001  
  
6:30 pm  
  
Scarlet shot targets in the training pit for, she didn't know how long. The meeting with Duke had not gone well though and she was glad to get some time alone. The entire situation had gone way out of hand and she was extremely nervous, something she couldn't remember ever being. She'd called Little Conrad and Dashiell at her brothers and they were doing fine, though worried sick about their mother given the attack on Cobra Island. It was times like this she really wished she could talk to her family about this but too much was top secret and personal.  
  
"I hate my life." Scarlet sighed.  
  
"Hmmm, someone isn't having a very good day, it would seem." Lady Jaye said from behind Scarlet, who looked up at her friend.  
  
"Tell me about it. In fact say the worst week of my life." Scarlet did not exaggerate as she fired the gun for a bull's eye into the Cobra target and the simulation ended. President Bush had spared no expense on funding G.I. Joe this time around.   
  
"Given the kind of things we've been through, that's saying a lot." Lady Jaye smirked as she set the program for another round, two subjects, and top difficulty. The system then produced a huge array of Cobra troops and laser fire around the two women and a life or death battle began between them and their illusionary foes.  
  
"Trust me I would trade what I'm going through right now for a straight fight against a giant amoeba or face stealing cosmetics companies any day." Scarlet smiled, thinking of some of the more insane situations they've found themselves in. Leaping over an explosion, she fired a crossbow bolt into a Cobra trooper who vanished promptly.  
  
"Well, you may just get your wish pretty soon. Duke wants you on the mission into the swamps of Zartan, while they try and track down Cobra's launching site for whatever might be up in the sky." Lady Jaye ducked under two laser blasts before swinging her javelin into holographic jaws and knocking them into oblivion with blows to the neck with her fists.  
  
Scarlet didn't trust Zartan one bit and frankly was fairly certain that the mercenary leader was going to promptly turn over the Joes to his "brothers" the moment he could for whatever reward Cobra Reborn would be willing to give.  
  
'And just what is John willing to give for me?' Scarlet blinked as a laser bolt nearly took her shoulder off before Lady Jaye pushed her out of its' way.  
  
"Slipping in your old age aren't we, Shana?" Jaye smirked as a Cobra tank exploded thanks to Jaye's javelins.  
  
"Oh shut up." Scarlet smirked at her friend. Lady Jaye was her closet friend, but she couldn't talk to her about this thing like she wanted to. It was one thing to be betrayed, it was quite another to have the betrayer trying to destroy you and your way of life.  
  
'It sounds like a really bad fiction.' She smirked kicking another illusion in the head before bringing out her rifle and destroying five more. The simulation ended about twenty minutes later and Scarlet fell flat on the ground in exhaustion but they'd amassed the highest score yet.  
  
"What a rush…Scarlet…is something wrong." Lady Jaye stopped to look at her friend.  
  
"Yes." Scarlet said, shaking her head. "What gave it away?"  
  
"The fact this took thirty minutes instead of ten…it would take five but I'm taking it easy before I go with Flint to check on our kids, they take more energy than assaulting a Cobra base." Jaye smirks. "You haven't looked this bad since Duke's last coma."  
  
Scarlet sighed, truth be told, she'd been worse, but right now it wasn't time to bring that up.  
  
"You wouldn't believe me…." Scarlet sighed before getting the look from Lady Jaye.  
  
"I'm related to Destro, we've traveled through time, and I once destroyed a conch which allowed the Baroness to control the male population of the world." Lady Jaye reminded her.  
  
"Point conceded. I used to date the new Cobra Commander." Scarlet admitted. She didn't want to say, was in love with, because every time she thought about that she developed an urge to kill someone.  
  
"Okay, your right. I don't believe it." Lady Jaye blinked.  
  
"He's also the son of the original Cobra Commander. I think he retreated because I saw him." Scarlet said in a matter of fact tone.  
  
"I no longer doubt you have the bizarre ability to attract the strangest men in the world." Jaye sighed and helped Scarlet up off the ground.  
  
"Next time I'll try for James Bond." Scarlet shook her head and walked away, still trying to move through the strangeness of the situation.  
  
***  
  
July 15, 2001  
  
2:59 pm  
  
The new Cobra Commander and Snakes watched the Earth come into focus on the Cobra Command Station's view monitors.  
  
"Twenty seconds until targeting is complete, Commander." Shareware said with a look towards his master who nodded in return.  
  
"So, this is your Plan B. I'm not entirely sure it will succeed where the MASS Device, Pyramid of Darkness, and many, many other super weapons have failed spectacularly." Destro said as he clenched his metal gauntlets and looked at the Baroness beside him, uncomfortable with the confidence and blood thirst she had been showing since Cobra Island.  
  
"Destro, your continuing questioning of my tactics is truly beginning to annoy me. The MASS device, Pyramid of Darkness, dollar bill destroying energy beams, and other "super weapons" as you call them were not the problem but the essential planning involved….a weapon is only as good as it's user." The Commander said as Snakes hissed at his feet.  
  
"The planning wassssssss perfect, it wassssss the incompetentssssss who dealt with it afterwardssssss who made the planssssss to fail." Snakes murmured.  
  
"Or perhaps it was destiny, father, that you would only taste victory until the time you could devour it here." The new commander quickly changed the subject so best to avoid the fact that his father the very person who dealt with it afterwards.  
  
"Targeting….locked on." Shareware said looking up as the chords tied directly to the Cobra Command Station's central computer reacted to his every thought.  
  
"I think it would be better for all parties concerned, Commander, if we made the demonstration of this station's destructive power on the G.I. Joe's command headquarters." Fallen Angel smashed her fists together and breathed a deep breath watching from the deck below.  
  
"Demonstration of this station's….*snerk*." Shareware said while being paid no attention of attention to by Cobra Reborn's masters. "Geez has nobody here seen Star Wars?" he sighed under his breath as they continued to ignore him.  
  
"As I argued before…TO YOU ALL….G.I. Joe must be made an example of and have sufficiently fought for their cause enough that I will give them fair warning before I annihilate them and their cause in the fashion befitting a Fior." The Commander smiled. It would a trial by combat that would settle once and for all who was truly the rightful ruler of the world.  
  
"And I have argued to you that you are showing the same overestimation of your power and ignorance of G.I. Joe's skills that your father did before you!" The Baroness DeCobray hissed toward the Commander and growled when Snakes returned it.  
  
"Believe what you will Baroness. Everything G.I. Joe does I am aware of and I have my own reasons for wanting them alive…brace yourselves everyone. Begin the de-cloaking procedure and power up the afterburners for immediate departure from our position once the blast is fired. I want this timed perfectly. The weapon is of no use unless we can make sure it the world's nations cannot retaliate against our position." The Commander ordered, grabbing some nearby railing as on the monitor the image of the now docked U.S.S. Patriot was on the screen surrounded by the energy cannon's focus.  
  
"You may fire at will." Cobra Commander said while his father had a sadistic glint in his eye. The station shuddered visibly and the scene went a bright, hot, blinding, red as the fusion cannon blast cleared and the aircraft carrier Patriot was completely annihilated with minimal damage to the dock around it. Jupiter's Thunder was indeed the most powerful weapon the world had ever designed.  
  
"I detect no trace of survivors, sir, though anyone watching what we did is either blind or wetting themselves." Shareware smirked as the Commander frowned visibly and shook his head.  
  
"Transmit this to the pre-ordained locations. I the Commander of the Revolutionary Group Cobra hereby inform you that the destruction of U.S.S. Patriot was retaliation for centuries of civil war, injust rule, and strife that the forces the United States through G.I. Joe, the Soviet Union through the October Guard, and Hitler through his Nazis have supported. Good men have died in this attack as well as the wicked and I bear the responsibility for this. However, the Earth must become fully aware of the price of war and that no longer will it be stood for this quiet age of death where starvation, pestilence, mass murder, and the torture of one's fellow humans can be safely tucked away. Nations of the World, I have cleared of you of your previous leadership and the mistakes of the past…I command you to use this time I am giving you to charter an end to all of which I speak of and usher humanity into a new Golden Age. Since this is common decency I speak of and I am the savage which drives you to such actions I take no pride but no shame in informing you that every hour you delay I will eliminate a major military base or platform of oppression." Cobra Commander waved as Shareware stopped the transmission.  
  
"Highly melodramatic." The Baroness said, and Destro agreed.  
  
"One wondersssss exactly what one'sssssss goalssssss are and if they are compatible with our own, my sssssson." Snakes looked up with his soulless stare.  
  
"Why you cursed faithless freak…" Fallen Angel already had her gun out before she was stopped.  
  
"Fear is a powerful tool of motivation, but men eventually master all of their fears. One must understand how one can turn fear into devotion. Deprived of their militaries and blessed with a new utopian society I will mold, Cobra will be viewed as saviors as in the long term we are able to move fully into power…. since the Old leaders will have been suitably "adjusted" to our point of view." Cobra Commander sighed. He was uncomfortable with the brain washing that was being done, but Doctor Thoughtwave was an expert in his field and it was necessary for their ultimate victory to be as bloodless as possible.  
  
"Jussssssst remember that any victory which isssssss not total, issssssss worthlessssss." Snakes murmured as the Commander left his enemies alone on the bridge.  
  
'I am surrounded like Caesar.' Were Cobra Commander's parting musings.  
  
***  
  
Destro looked at the treasures that were being piled into his personal transport from the Cobra Command Station. The wealth of items included gold bars, classic paintings, and jewelry, which could be easily exchanged. The wealth of the Empire of Cobra was considerable but the Scottish Lord had little desire for it but to regain enough of his original wealth that he might somehow continue his line without the heady disgrace that the war he had fought for so long had brought him.  
  
"Be careful with that you twit! It's from the Ming Dynasty and I'll have your head if it's scratched!" Destro shouted to the Cobra workmen.  
  
Destro sighed as he looked at the new crop of fanatics that Cobra had managed to acquire. In the beginning the forces of Cobra had been exactly like this. The young idealistic soldiers promised delusions of victory and a better world order where they would be viewed as heroes in a new age. Inevitably this crop was cut down like wheat and mercenaries started to do the fighting before mutiny and rebellion destroyed the organization. James McCullen, Destro, did not like to think that prison had reformed him and in truth he had few regrets about his time with Cobra, but he had lost a decade of his life, his family business, and was about to be dumped anew in the intrigues of madmen like the Old Cobra Commander whose form reflected what Destro had always known about him. His son seemed slightly more rational with a slighter sense of honor but it was also obvious "Snakes" cared nothing for his heir and still considered himself Cobra's master. Given such leadership it was not hard to see another long fall from great heights to terrible doom and hellish torment.  
  
"You seemed vexed, Destro." The Baroness said, coming up behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Even as Destro took them away and looked at her with his dark deep stare "Even on the edge of the victory we have spent most of our lives waiting for."  
  
"Are we really on the verge of victory, Baroness, or is that what you want to believe?" Destro asked with a half sneer under his mask.  
  
"I'm not sure I care much for your attitude, Destro. You have seen what Jupiter's Thunder can do to the world's military…soon the leaders shall be under our thumb as well and the world will come tumbling like a house of cards soon after." The Baroness stared at her lover.  
  
"So you say, but as I recall with my previous designs, similar expectations met with failure. I no longer believe anywhere in my heart that humanity has the intellectual capacity to respond to fear properly anymore." Destro said shaking his head. "And forgive me if I believe that following a honor obsessed samurai baying at the whims of a mad mutant lizard is not the healthiest course of action at present."  
  
The Baroness smiled evilly "Pessimistic as always."  
  
Destro shook his head and looked out towards the Earth below which was a glorious gem that held wonders untold for a man who might be willing to plunder them and seek them, treasures the world would part with much more readily than it's freedom. "I will not debate the obvious with you Baroness, but I implore you to consider that together we could make a life for ourselves far away from this…madness."  
  
The Baroness scoffed. "I think you have gone soft in your imprisonment, Destro. I have dreamed of revenge for so long that it has become my entire sum and what I wreaked so far is but the opening act to the DEATH OF GI JOE and the DEVASTATION OF ALL MY OPPRESSORS!"  
  
The Baroness DeCobray smacked Destro across the face and he fell back the slightest bit as he looked at her.  
  
Destro looked at the Baroness with a commanding and penetrating gaze as he crumpled his fist together and slammed it into a nearby wall. "Mark my words Baroness that whether you wish it or not we will both escape this never-ending cycle and start anew. The only question shall be just how we do it."  
  
Destro ordered the remainder of his goods brought onboard the transport and headed then back to the world of his birth.  
  
***  
  
Falcon overlooked the teams, which had been recruited for the upcoming missions and couldn't put away his doubts about them all. Some of them were, to politely put it, well past retirement age and more mouth than bite despite what big brother Duke would like to say and the rest were amazingly under tested in this.  
  
"So what's your code name soldier?" Falcon looked at the first member of Team A, which would be tackling the investigation of Cobra's rocket platform in Siberia.  
  
"Last Chance." The blonde woman said, she wasn't beautiful but pretty and looked like she had taken up an athletic lifestyle only recently but with a relish. She was an intelligence operative from what Falcon's reports said and a good one.  
  
"So how'd you get that name?" Falcon asked looking at her.  
  
"I was a defense attorney sir before I joined the Army. I was viewed as the Last Chance for prisoners who were on their last appeal." Last Chance said.  
  
"And what made you join the army?" Falcon put his hands behind his back.  
  
"The fact I was so good at my job sir." The woman said then frowned.  
  
Falcon nodded an "oh" before he went over to Infiltrator whom had received a commendation and a transfer from his fourteen year mission on Cobra Island. The man had considerable combat and guerilla skill, which would be very useful on this mission but the new Major was a bit unsettling to the Colonel, especially when he insisted on calling him "kid".  
  
"Okay everybody your missions are starting now. With the attacks on the worlds' military by Cobra's space station we know that they are operating somewhere in the stars and unfortunately since the damn thing can move across the globe in an hour and we at present don't have any way of locating it…our top priority is finding some way to get onboard a supply shuttle or other means and taking the machine out." Falcon paced around the room.  
  
"We know the drill. Just point us where we have to go and I'll make sure it happens." Beachhead, who had been the first person to re-enlist in G.I. Joe, slammed his fists together. Falcon didn't like that the man was now an officer nor did he like the former instructor was in charge of the mission to Cobra's suspected rocket pad but it had been the Commander of the Military's orders. One didn't question General Hawk especially when he's your natural father.  
  
"Yeah pipe down there. You, Infiltrator, Icicle, Demolition Derby, Last Chance, and Punch Card are the spearhead of team A. If you locate Cobra's rocket pad we need you to get a tracer on anything going up. If the situation warrants it I'll lead in my own team and Flint a third to provide backup. If your mission is successful though we'll fall back to our mobile base now that this one is compromised and we'll prepare an all out assault on Cobra Command Station." Falcon turned to group two.  
  
"Scarlett, you'll be leading Team B, which will be in charge of babysitting Zartan and making sure that his sister's Dreadnoks are shut down. The rocket pad information isn't necessarily secure and this lead is arguably just as good for finding out where the Snakes are. Dialtone, Creed, Gung Ho, Playboy, and Snake Eyes will be your team. I've contacted several local military and police units plus a standby Team of Joes to put the kibosh on the Dreadnoks if the Swamp Rat tries something funny." Colonel Falcon smiled.  
  
Scarlet smirked as if the Colonel's words had a joke. "Trust me, it'll be a long time before I'm afraid of what Zartan can pull. I'll head out with them as soon as the meeting is over."   
  
Falcon nodded and looked at the list of Joes that would eventually go down in history once they were fully trained that was, new names without past victories but a crisis already in the works. Hammerhead, Slackjaw, Greasefire, Stormwarden, Gaurdian Angel, Cold Iron, Hot Lead, Prophetess, and many others…  
  
'It's going to a long day.' He thought to himself. 


	7. A knock out, drag out, fight with the Dr...

Chapter Seven  
  
July 15, 2001  
  
8:01 pm  
  
"So this is what my local sewer backs up into," Creed said with a turt sigh. He was scanning the area around the swamp Zartan was leading them into and it wasn't pretty. The place was about the absolute largest chunk of Lousiana Everglade privately owned by any individual in the state and it pretty much proved to  
the majority of the team that Washington had no idea what the hell they were doing if they couldn't figure out the Dreadnoks were operating out of the  
place. It looked like a full training facility with ample room to stock their weapons.  
  
"Be silent! This is the type of place that my ancestors were forced to move into when we couldn't function in normal society because of our aversion to sunlight. It is a place of beauty as well as strengthening power that a cretin like yourself cannot appreciate!" Zartan hissed as he looked about the place for signs of what he expected to find in this place. The mercenary leader had no doubts where his old companions loyalties lied and it was always with the man who could provide them with the biggest paycheck.  
  
"Yeah Swampy, you and the poor Potato famine victims are really high on my sympathy list. Right up there with smokers." Playboy said even as he looked around, edgy with his rifle.  
  
"Be careful guys. Zartan may not look it but he's a doctor of bio-engineering as well as advanced robotics. Even thirteen years in the slammer haven't dulled the fact he's a smart cookie," Scarlet looked around the tiny islands formed in the middle of the place. They had to ditch their boat someplace back to make sure they could avoid all the little alarms that the Dreadnoks had put in place.  
  
"Thank you Joe for recognizing that the way I choose to live my life doesn't necessarily impact my intelligence. Given enough years I'm sure you'll be able to learn how to create fire or if what I heard on base to be true, keep a man," Zartan gave a cruel grin as he sneered at Scarlet from the lead of the trees. Even the slightest bit of pain he could inflict on G.I. Joe was a symphony to him. Zartan was still torn whether or not he was going to inflict an equal amount of pain on the Cobra leader who had refused his rescue, simply kill him, or get a fortune from him to pay for all the time he had spent in prison before both. Zartan was leaning towards the latter are the most appropriate.  
  
"I'm not getting anything on my scanners. The Dreadnoks must have coated the entire place in some sort of dampening field generated from the place's heart. I'm afraid we're sitting pretty blind here," Dialtone was forced to concede as he looked to his team leader.  
  
Snake-Eyes then lifted his hand and gave a sign that Scarlet translated "Snake-Eyes hears something. Zartan, what's going on?"  
  
"If I had to venture a guess G.I. Joe then I would have to say I believe it's jet-skis or some other method of transportation for the Noks. They're probably comming in very large numbers and very well armed because of the alarm I tripped a few minutes ago," Zartan said with a sneer even as the air filled with blue laser blasts.   
  
"Zartan you..." Scarlet was cut off by the merc's spin kick to her skull as he dragged her underneath the swamp water where he began to swim with all of his might.   
  
"Fuc..! Its the Joes! Blow em all to hell!" Buzzer shouted on the back of the Swamp-flyer as his little woman rode on the back with a heavy repeating laser canon straight from the factories of Cobra in India. Buzzer had changed little in the past decade save deciding to grow a goatee and getting himself a nicer pair of glasses.  
  
"Right-o! I'll bag meself one for our honeymoon Buzz!" Anarchy said, a punk girl from the streets she was barely legal now and they'd been married two years. Still with her flaming red hair, a body to die for, and a ten foot vicious streak in a five foot four package she was everything that he wanted in a girl.  
  
"Take your time, it's like shooting fish in a barrel! Cut em up good Green!" Buzzer shouted.  
  
Green was a new recruit to the Dreadnoks that had been a left-over result from one of Doctor Mindbender's little side-projects. When they'd pulled him out of a tank. Zarana hadn't let Ripper put a laser bolt in the poor billy's head and instead had adopted the horrible little mutant. One arm was entirely steel with a bit of Edward Scissorhands action going on and the rest of him was furry shark-monkey. Green lept off his own Swamp-flyer and did a sommersault through the air over the G.I. Joe counter fire to drive his little knives into the preacher's heart.   
"God..." Creed cried even as Green let out a cackling laugh.  
  
"Dreadnoks-1 Joe-0!" Buzzer shouted even as the rest of the crew soared forward from the swamp. Over the years they'd invited cousins, bastards, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, husbands, wives, and even the occasional dirty piece of trash who was just cool enough to hang with the group. Combine that with the pay and weapons from the new boss and the fact they'd get to kill Joes made this the best day of Buzzer's life. It was also his last as Dialtone ducked under Anarchy's fire and threw a magnetic grenade that attached itself to to his ride's engines. The resulting explosion gave the new acting team-leader time to shout out his next order   
  
"RETREAT!"  
  
Too bad Snake-Eyes was already well under the water, following Zartan.  
  
***  
  
Torch would have mourned the passing of the one man who he could still reasonably call a friend from the old days had he not been watching the  
Power Puff Girls on the Cartoon Network instead of the security cameras depicting the G.I. Joe slaughter. The Dreadnok mansion was one of the most  
advanced Cobra facilities currently on Earth but it was also one of the most comfy. Thrasher was currently playing pool in the next room with Zandar and  
neither of them were paying much attention to the presence of G.I. Joe. The damn rules said that at least four of them had to stay behind whenever  
something came up to be killed and even then Zartan's illegitmate daughter Zanya had snuck off to do some damage.  
  
"That's the problem with young people these days. They've got no respect for their elders." Torch muttered as he sipped down his beer.  
  
"Yes, I've often found respect lacking among those under me," Zartan said from behind as he wrapped Torch in a strangle-hold.  
  
"Zartan!" Ripper said busting his stick against the pool-table in mid-shot as he stepped up from behind in absolute terror.  
  
"Brother!" Zander looked at the man with a look of both joy and horror.  
  
"Don't you oh brother me you traitorous dog! Where the hell have you been for the past decade! No don't answer that! I know you've been willing to visit for the few years but the security was always too tight to bust me out. I should kill the lot of you and set up something similar for everyone who comes back to this little Taj Mahall!" Zartan was actually quite serious and he began to squeeze on Torch's neck to snap it like a twig when he heard the oddest statement from the front door of the Dreadnok Swamp Mansion.   
  
"Zartan!" Zarana said with joy as she ran up to her brother and wrapped her arms around his neck. Zarana was a far cry from the girl that Zartan had remembered with apparently some style having rubbed off on her. She was wearing Paris fashions and her hair she'd let grow long to his complete disapproval. Still, Zartan let his heart soften as he closed his arms around his sister and gave her a cool hug.  
  
"So at last the infamous Zartan is met. I cannot say this is an honor," the voice that followed Zarana was a cold one like the kind you'd expect to come from a walking corpse. It didn't scare Zartan whose own voice was affected by a second pair of vocal chords that had been part of the mutation he'd undergone thanks to the wonders of evolution. He was dressed in a three thousand dollar business suit with the Cobra Hood embroidered on his left lapel. His eyes were bio-implants like the kind Doctor Mindbender used to give members of the Crimson Guard who were too stupid to keep all their body parts. Zartan didn't want to know what this fool was doing with his sister but the mercenary kill him before he could find out.  
  
"So your the little boy who thinks that he can rule Cobra? You have no idea how much that organization depended on me.  
  
"No one is certainly more aware of the history of Cobra than myself than perhaps my father Sir Zartan. Your contributions were considerable, I will be the first to admit. But you were also ambitious and needlessly destructive in your efforts. Hence my decision that it was better for you to pay your debt to society than spend valuable Cobra lives to secure your release," The new head of Cobra causally caught Zartan's fist from connecting with his face and applied a great deal of pressure to his hands. Surprisingly Zartan merely struck out with his other fist into his face at the shattering of finger bones.  
  
"Impressive reflexes," the man said shaking his face a bit from the blow.  
  
"I don't know what sort of people your used to dealing with COMMANDER but where I'm from you learn whether or not you should be afraid of those you hire. I'm in charge of the Dreadnoks now and if you want to leave this house alive you'll...." Zartan noticed that the man wasn't even looking at him but looking at his prisoner.   
  
"I'll pay you ten million dollars for that woman," Cobra Commader said with not a word of hesitation.  
  
"I want double that. Consider it payment for the years of hell in a dry prison cell I had to go through," Zartan had just been going to kill her anyway. Perhaps giving her over to some of his men for a round of sport first.  
  
"Done," Cobra Commander rose and reached into his business suit. Zartan had his arm held back from striking him in the throat with a fatal chop by Zarana to see that the man was pulling out a black snakeskin checkbook. Zartan took it from Cobra Commander's hands and looked at the numbers inside with wide eyes. Apparently they'd finally hired someone other than those idiot twins to run their business ventures. Handing it back to the Commander, Jonathan Sharp wrote the check and handed it over to Zartan who snatched it away.  
  
"My business has already been concluded with the Lady Zarana for this quarter. If you are truly taking over the Dreadnoks I shall be seeing you in three months and I suggest you manage to conclude the inevitable bloodshed quickly for the operations planned at that point are extensive. I suggest you furthermore make sure to ask your sister just how I run my operation. You will find it quite different than working under either Serpentor or my father," the huge man then cradled Scarlet in his arms and lifted her up like he was lifting a bride off the thresh. Exiting the house to the boat which was waiting for him on the docks, he did not notice Snake Eyes hiding underneath the wooden planks.  
  
The ninja had already slain the Dreadnok's crocodiles and had been intending to go directly after Zartan to rescue the person who meant the most to Snake-Eyes in the world but the presence of the leader of Cobra complicated matters considerably. It broke his heart but he had to follow the man to Cobra's base and get a call off to G.I. headquarters.   
  
***  
  
10:14 pm  
  
The trek through the Everglades was one of the most harrowing that Dialtone had ever experienced in his life and would go down in his memory as the worst hour of his command. The game of hide and seek had gone on with the Dreadnoks for more than two hours with every few minutes interrupted by a hail of laser fire that meant the battle and run was rejoined. If Gung-Ho hadn't been with them, Dialtone was sure that both himself and Playboy would be skinned and mounted over the Nok's hiding place. As such they had killed about three of them and wounded another one of their pursuers which left just about half the state as far as the communications expert could tell.  
  
"It wasn't right that he die this way," Playboy said about Creed whose cold corpse the kid had insisted on slugging through the entire swamp. Dialtone had hoped that they might be able to get the poor guy some medical attention but the thugs had just kept comming to the point that he had just bled to death on them.  
  
"It's never right kid for a man to die in combat. I was perfectly happy slinging gumbo with my wife and kids in the Big Easy before I got called back into service. Still, he knew what he was getting into when he signed on for this job and that's what he got," Gung-Ho said in about as comforting a voice as the grizzled marine could muster at a time like this.  
  
Playboy looked like he was going to be sick and Dialtone didn't blame him. "What exactly are we going to do now? Creed is dead and so are  
probably Scarlet and Snake-Eyes..."  
  
"Don't say that. No Joe is dead until we have a body!" Gung-Ho pointed his gun at the socialite's face with a spit of tobacco to the side of sweat  
drenched body.  
  
It was hard to imagine Scarlet or Snake Eyes dead and Dialtone knew that G.I. Joes had come back from worse situations in their lives but the last couple of days seemed like hell on Earth. The MASS Device, the invasion of Washington D.C., the Spores of Cobra-La, and the Pyramid of Darkness had been damn dark times for the world but Dialtone had thought he'd left that all behind when he'd entered into business for himself. He'd made millions in dot.coms before losing it all but he'd never thought he'd be afraid Cobra was going to conquer the planet again. As absolutely bad as it sounded, he was getting too old for this sort of thing.  
  
"Okay we're just lost in a swamp with a small army trailing our ass. Any bright ideas Creole?" Playboy copped an attitude which got him thrown against a tree by Gung-Ho.   
"Provided Dialtone is up for it I think we need to take the fight to the Swamp Rats where they live. I know these bayous just as well as they do and I'd wager better. I'm not about to go back to Hawk, Duke, and Falcon and say that I lost Zartan before running with my tail between my legs. We might all end up dead but at least we'll make sure they'll be a few less scumbags for Cobra to put against the American people!" Gung-Ho shouted even as he started re-loading his laser based assault-rifle.   
"I can't say I'm exactly enthused about the prospects of facing Cobra's thugs head-on but I don't see that we have much choice.   
"Do I get a vote?" Playboy asked as he felt the back of his neck.   
"No,." Gung Ho answered. 


	8. GI Joe in the Land of the Midnight Sun

10:32 A.M Siberian Time  
  
Beach Head personally had always hated being a civilian. He didn't like people as a rule butting their noses into his business, he didn't like people who were obnoxious that he couldn't kick the butt of, and there was absolutely nothing glamourous about wearing a damn tie and suit to punch numbers on a machine nine to five. He was glad to be in the Army again and this time it was going to be for life, no matter what his mother thought about it.  
  
"Those damn Snakes knew we were coming!" Beach Head shouted at the top of his lungs. The G.I. Joe Angel-7 Stealth fighters that were their escort across the most deserted piece of tundra in Siberia were getting their asses blown out of them by Cobra's Phantom fighters. Every time the enemy fired they would appear for just a second then vanish again.  
  
"Well Sir it's a bit late to be worrying about that now!" Demolition Derby shouted as weaved the Air Skimmer Troop Transport inbetween a pair of missles aimed at their engines.  
  
"Well if you don't mind taking a woman's advice, we need to eject now," Icicle causally said as she blew a pink bubblegum bubble.  
  
"I'll have none of that talk in my unit! This plane will be evacuated over my dead body!" Beach Head screamed as he waved his clenched fist toward the girl. She was trouble from the get go and reminded him of a more sarcastic version of Lady Jaye.  
  
"You'd better be getting the coffin out then sir," Icicle pointed to the flames comming from their rear thrusters. They'd managed to catch a few vehicle blasts and that meant they couldn't go anywhere but down now. The Alaskan girl then started to suit up in her parachute right before Beach Head's flustered eyes.  
  
"Sir I've got a mark on a potential landing spot for our evacuation. It'll be the perfect place to escape Cobra's assault!" Punch Card shouted as he looked up from his computer, adjusting the glasses that reminded Beach Head too much of the terrorist's drones.  
  
"We're not going anywhere!" Beach Head grabbed the parachute off Icicle's back and then pulled out his pistol as he shot the control panel for the Air Skimmer in the cockpit.  
  
"Are you out of your damn mind!" Infiltrator shouted even as the plane began moving forward to a crash landing.  
  
"Our Father, who art in Heaven..." Last Chance began to say even as she braced herself in her seat.  
  
"I know how much punishment this machine will take before it's on a one way ticket to Hell. If Demolition Derby is half as good as his reports say he is...and you better pray missy that he is...we should be fine. Plus Cobra wants us alive or we'd be dead already! I intend to make sure they wonder whether or not they failed in that respect!" Beach Head told them the plan he'd come up with in the first few minutes of this attack.  
  
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life!" Icicle screamed even as everyone braced for the impact as the plane was brought in low against the pine trees that exploded around the vehicle's descent.  
  
Icicle didn't get to say much else before the plane shattered it's wings off and came to a screeching halt, pressed against the side of a snow bound hill. Surprisingly to every member of the team but Beach Head, they were all alive if a bit bruised.  
  
"Ten hut! Everyone whose able to walk is getting out of here now!" Beach head shouted and shoot open the door locks to the plane's side.  
  
"I think I wet my shorts," Punch Card said as he looked at the shattered monitor of his laptop.  
  
"It'll keep you warm rookie. Harvest anything you can from the ship and get ready for Hell. We don't have much time to complete our mission and I'm not going home until we can transmit the coordinates of Cobra's rocket pad to G.I. Joe HQ!" Beach head shouted before Infiltrator pulled open the side of the doors.  
  
"I knew I should have stayed in law," Last Chance muttered as she cut herself from the seat-belt.  
  
***  
  
8:45 PM  
  
Washington D.C. was a glittering gem in the Nation's crown jewels but it was under martial law right now and the majority of the citizens had evacuated out of fear of a nuclear strike from Cobra's new super weapon. Under the guise of National Guardsmen G.I. Joe had regrouped and were currently using the empty Capital Hill building as their headquarters while a dummy G.I. Joe rode around on a armored train throughout the country.  
  
"General Hawk, I don't like Beach Head and his team being used as decoys," Conrad Hauser said even as dozens of operatives worked feverishly at their consoles to try and decode Cobra's transmissions across the planet. Duke had just gotten off the phone with his wife and kids and the situation they described a the nation's mood was not at all comforting. Mass panic had settled in across America and there were no leaders in any position to reassure them that everything was going to turn out okay. Duke wasn't even sure that would be telling them the truth at this point either.  
  
"I don't like it either Duke but these terrorists have been one step ahead of us since the game began. Flint's team is armed with our best operatives and the finest snow trained troops the country currently has to offer. I won't lie to you Duke that if our Siberia operation doesn't turn up results, we may have to start worrying more about damage control than actually winning the war," General Hawk said with a shake of his head before one of the officers brought him his coffee. With nothing to strike at, Hawk was enjoying himself lording over what he considered a useless bureaucracy in the military.  
  
"You can't mean that Sir," Conrad said with a grit to his teeth. Duke had a strange relationship with General Hawk who was not only his commanding officer but his step-father. When Duke's father had died early on in Vietnam, just a few years before Duke went on to serve himself, then Captain Clayton Albernathy had gone on to court and marry Duke's mother and father his kid brother Falcon. Conrad had never let that interfere with their relationship though and though he had come to respect the man as a leader, he'd never been close to him as family.  
  
"Several nations across Africa and the Middle East have already given their unconditional surrenders to Cobra operatives Duke. There is already reports from the C.I.A that intense fighting is going on in Russia and China between Pro-Cobra partisans and the loyalist military. The bean counters and inexperienced command left over from the attacks are already talking appeasing the new leadership rather than directly challenging them," General Hawk drank his coffee hard and shook his head clean of the cobwebs.   
"You can't appease Cobra General Hawk, you know that," Conrad said, shaking his head. It wasn't the first time that Duke considered putting in a written to Hawk that they turn the United State's nuclear weapons supply into the sky. He'd already talked to a number of individuals about seeding the space like a mine-field to catch Cobra's cloaked space station full blast. The only problem with that was that he half suspected that was exactly what Cobra wanted and would simply put them in charge of a massive supply of weapons while their own machine inevitably ran down.  
  
"No you can't and following their plan would make Hitler and Stalin look like men with pop guns given the amount of power they'd be turning over to the group. The Cold War would be just above room temperature in comparison," General Hawk had personally had to issue clandestein threats to a number of individuals to keep their mouth shut. He didn't like what this chaos was doing to him and he didn't like the feeling that a number of the people involved were almost eager to turn over the world to the fascist regime. One communication he'd let slip by was from the current leader in Germany whose parents were Nazi youth, he was already negiotiating for his country to turn on their allies for the past forty years against the Pro-Loyalist Baltics.  
  
"Sir I've got something!" Mainframe said who had started work for AT&T and ended up going bankrupt with Dialtone before the NSA picked up his bills. Mainframe had changed the most in the decade since G.I. Joe. His love for Zarana had not apparently worked out very well and the two had parted terms on bad company, he'd eventually found himself involved with a very nice girl and had gotten a bit of a paunch from her cooking. Still he'd trained the finest crop of spies and number crunchers in the world.  
  
"What is it?" Duke said, comming over as fast as he could, actually jumping over a few desks to do it.  
  
"Just like General Hawk thought, there is a traitor in the G.I. Joe ranks. It was an almost undetectable transmission being conducted in the guise of radio broadcasts using a specific series of code words. The last one we've managed to catch and it confirms the traitor telling Cobra about the dummy train and the missions," Mainframe said as he put his hands through his slightly balding head.  
  
"Any sign of the traitor's identity?" Duke asked as he looked at the information, it was thorough but disorganized.  
  
"Not yet Sir," one of the rookies named Jack something said back.  
  
"Perhaps we can turn this situation toward our advantage. Mainframe do we know enough about this code to send a fake broadcast of our own?" General Hawk said with a rather desperate but strong authority to his voice. He'd been working thirty-six hours straight and he was pretty much at his own wits end here.  
  
"They're all based on ancient military commanders and Wizard of Oz references. I think I can figure it out enough to send a reasonable facimile but there's no guarentee it will work," Mainframe reluctantly admitted as he stuffed his hands in his pocket.  
  
"Do it anyway. If we can do this properly we might be able to lure Cobra into a trap that will finish it off once and for all," General Hawk said, popping a cigarette into his mouth.  
  
"And if it doesn't work General?" Duke said, expecting the answer.  
  
"Every last man I send to do the job is likely to end up dead," General Hawk made no bones about the truth of the mission's danger.  
  
***  
  
"So long! Farewell! Alveterzay! Goodbye!" Quick Kick said with a smile as the Russian Farmer dropped Team C off at the end of the road in Siberia, literally. Team C was the actual strike team with the mission of knocking out Cobra Commander's secret facility. Personally Quick Kick had the idea that if Cobra could afford a gigantic rocket pad, a device that could hide it anywhere on Earth, and still have money left over to build the space station from Moonraker....they probably had it hid in Hawaii or someplace ironic like in General Hawk's backyard.  
  
"Well this is a wonderfully romantic spot. I wonder why it never caught on with the tourists," Lady Jaye said looking at the isolated snow land that the sun loomed over like a red beacon.  
  
"The cold here drops below anything in the coldest part of America. Our suits will protect us from the worst of it but if Cobra has it's own method of protecting itself from the frost we'll be practically frozen when we reach them," Snow job answered.  
  
"Oh," Lady Jaye answered and tested her javelin toss a bit for cramping.  
  
"Listen up! We've got a long walk ahead of us if the information we managed to get from the air-trooper captured on Cobra Island is correct. We'll be meeting up with the October Guard for a joint mission to knock out the facility and find special armaments prepared for us in a spot for the strike. If Beach Head has done his mission right, any substantial terrorist forces will be chasing them down on the other side of Siberia," Flint said without apology to the sheer insanity of this particular mission. Flint personally believed that they should just forego the special operations aspect of the mission and roll over anything Cobra had summed up with regular military. All this cloak and dagger stuff was eventually going to bite them all in the....  
  
"Looks like the October Guard found us Flint," Lady Jaye interrupted Flint's train of thought as he turned his attention to the red, white, and blue flares that were sent into the air nearby.  
  
"I hate those people. They give me the creeps," Quick Kick said. The martial arts master had limited experience with the Russian equivalent of G.I. Joe but it had all been bad. He'd left his wife and two kids back in New York while some of his students ran his dojo but he'd promised he'd only get himself fighting some Ninjas, he'd hate to end up getting his epitheth written 'shot in the back by Boris and Natasha'.  
"Well its been a democracy for some time. I'm sure President Putin only recruited the most upstanding men for the job." Dusty said. The Desert Man was one of the oddest recruits for the Siberian mission but one of the yokels between him and General Duke had made the assumption that the tundra and desert wasn't that different. In some respects Dusty was right for the job but in other ways they might have just recruited his gal Covergirl and put her in one of the ice suits they were wearing.  
  
"Yeah okay and maybe someone will drop a house on the Cobra Commander and his father to save us the trouble of fighting them," Quick Kick added even as Lady Jaye began a brisk run when she saw the source of the flares.  
  
Daina the second in command of the October Guard before it was reinstated and afterwards was stumbling down the snow tipped hills with a bullet wound in her side and bleeding heavily. There were burns and marks across her face to give mute testament to the horror that she had recently been through.  
  
"Cobr...Cob.....General has traded his colors for theirs. October Guard is nearly wiped out.....they're bringing an army to finish the rest off," She managed to breath a bit more out before lasping into unconciousness.  
  
"If Beach Head has done his mission right huh?" Lady Jaye stared at her husband with a condescending glare. 


	9. Love and Darkness, the Traitor revealed

Chapter 9  
  
Scarlet woke up with the most splitting headache she'd ever had in her entire life. It was then she noticed that she was in the Temple of Doom combined with Lifestyles of the Rich and Ruthless. The room was made to look like it was composed of polished obsidian and the bed that she lied in resembled the mouth of a Cobra. Aztec, Minoan, Spartan, Dynastic Chinese, Mycenean, and African tribal antiques were liberally strewn about the place. A suit of armor from Ancient Rome and a broadsword from the Hundred years wars over the fire-place completed the effect.  
  
"Good evening Mrs. Bond..." Scarlet muttered as she stepped from underneath the silk sheet before immediately slapping themselves back over herself. Whoever was the person who had made her a guest in this palace had also taken the liberty of taking her clothes.  
  
'Jonathan you sick bas...' Scarlet shook her head, she had no idea it was necessarily her old friend and oddly that wasn't a comfort at all. Still, there was something familiar about this place as if she was stepping into the recesses of someone's mind. Reaching her hand into the drawers on the side of the bed she looked for something which might be useful here, maybe a key or even a weapon though she doubted whoever had kidnapped her was quite that stupid.   
  
'Great...books,' Scarlet thought as she found the contents. "Sun-Tzu's Art of War....Maciavelli's the Prince....Paradise Lost by John Milton....God Emperor of Dune and Emerald City of Oz?" Scarlet said the last two titles with a bit of surprise.  
  
"I find the last two titles the most educational in my studies of the human spirit and how it reacts to authority," the voice echoed through the room before from the shadows of the front of it emerged Jonathan. He was dressed in a silk white shirt and pants that made him look like he was preparing for bed.  
'If he thinks what I think he's thinking I might have to teach him something John Wayne Bobbit style...' The thought crossed Scarlet's mind as he approached but in truth she couldn't help but be a bit scared. The person she'd known had been the closest friend she'd ever had growing up and a strong influence on her life from war to politics but he'd never attack a woman. Oddly enough she believed that last statement.   
  
"You'll have to forgive the attire but I was asleep in the next store hall when I heard your breathing change," the new Cobra Commander said with a sly look as he soaked up her with his senses. Homo Serpentor was possessed of sight, smell, taste, and touch far beyond a humans but only with the blood of man could one truly appreciate the beauty of the things they created.  
  
"Actually I'd forgive you a lot sooner if you gave me something to wear," Scarlet said sarcastically. He'd not changed a bit since she'd known him in body save for the eyes and they were looking at her in a way that seemed hypnotic. Scarlet shook away her head from that thought, those eyes were exotic but they were also cold and consuming.  
  
"But of course, you will find your costume cleaned and your weapons with fresh ammunition in the closet next to you." The man said in a completely even tone even as he gestured to the obsidian closet that was practically invisible in the dimly lit room.  
  
"Awfully trusting Jonathan. Are you always this nice to POWs?" Scarlet said as she wrapped the covers around her tightly and looked in the closet to find an assortment of dresses in her size from Medieval to Vogue to tramp. Scarlet flushed past them and some things in Victoria Secret til she got her uniform for G.I. Joe and pulled out her crossbow which seemed alright.  
  
"I wish you to be comfortable Scarlet onboard Cobra Command Station. It is a marvel of human engineering and a place I hope will eventually become home to countless thousands of men when they journey towards the stars," Jonathan said even as he gestured for two Servitor droids to enter the room with a dinner table and food.  
  
"No chance of that Jonathan or should I call you Cobra Commander?" Scarlet dressed behind a screen that she found in the back of the close and tried to figure a way out of this situation.  
  
"Jonathan is fine. Only those who pay allegiance to the cause need refer to me as that, friends may call me by the alias which meant more to me than the number my father gave me or simply the Enemy," the man smiled as he lit two candles.  
  
Scarlet wanted to say she wasn't his friend but she didn't and loaded her crossbow with a stun bolt. She was very angry and considered firing a bolt right into the man's eye but she hesitated and finally decided her first priority was just to escape.  
  
"I've missed you a great deal in the intervening years. Ever since my father took me back to the Cause from our time together I always scoured the battle reports for any mention of your presence. When you were captured it caused me to wonder whether I could betray my family and beliefs to bring you to your freedom. When G.I. Joe was disbanded I was used the satelites Cobra placed in the sky to catch glimpses of you and the beautiful young boys which inherited their mother's strength to no doubt serve their country well." Jonathan gave a slight wistful look as he gazed off into the candle-light.  
  
The thought of her two sons gave Scarlet a pause as she opened the screen with her crossbow drawn. "Yeah Jonathan, I hate to burst your bubble but high-tech stalking is not my idea of romantic. I have to go now luv and I just want you to know it's been nice seeing you." Scarlet wasn't really lying in the last part but when duty and love fought, duty would win every time.  
  
"I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave my Lady. Jupiter's Thunder has almost finished bringing the world to it's knees and it is far too dangerous down there for a heroine such as yourself until the i's are dotted on the surrender compacts," Jonathan said pouring both himself and Scarlet a glass of wine that was bottled in the year of Napoleon's ascension.  
  
"Sorry Jon." Scarlet fired the stun bolt at John's head which would give him a face full of knock-out gas. She could do nothing but blink when he caught it in the air and snapped off it's edge, putting it down on the ground.  
  
"I insist that all the gene-therapy and cybernetic enhancements that go into the Crimson Guard are tested on myself first. Combined with a natural desire to master all forms of combat that I can...I fear I have nothing to fear from you my Southern belle," Jonathan's cold eyes focused in on her as Scarlet took a breath to calm herself.  
  
"I'm not your Southern Belle," Scarlet said staring as she took a seat across from him at the table.  
  
The room rocked a moment as the lights from the glowing crystal balls lain about the room flickered. Scarlet didn't have to think hard that was probably her lover's superweapon eradicating some bio-weapon facility, nuclear range, or communist government in general. She'd looked over the reports carefully and knew the targets being blasted were chosen for their unpopularity and inherent danger to the world as a whole. CC junior wanted to claim moral authority in his propaganda when this was all over.  
  
"Very well then I am your evil warlord," the Master of the world's most dangerous terrorist organization gave a slight smile.  
  
"How very comforting. Oooo Lobster my favorite," Scarlet didn't know what to do in this situation but she had to wait for an opening she figured.   
  
"The world is reaching a fulcrum my dear where the next decisions reached by the people of the world in a crisis will determine it's ultimate fate. They must either unite totally putting aside all prejudice, fear, and anger to raise the force to wipe Cobra out or they must surrender their authority to it's dominion," The Commander sipped his wine and looked across the table for a reaction.  
  
"It'll be the former Jonathan. I'd have thought you'd be smarter to realize that you can't put a boot on a man's face and make it like him. All your father...all this evil organization...has accomplished is kill thousands," Scarlet looked into those reptilian eyes and searched for any sign of remorse in him for the havok he had wrecked across the planet in the past month.  
  
"I know Scarlet. I have invested wisely in Cobra's future and while I hold out a slim hope for victory I know logically that victory is impossible. Without a legitamate government to draw from troops or moral authority beyond conquest in today's modern age I can only hope to inflame the fears and anger of the planet upon itself. My father could never understand this because the Cobra-la mindset is to bend to one of higher authority immediatly upon a show of force but humanity cannot be so easily cowed. I furthermore lack the predatory instinct that would allow me to instill the base terror and slavery upon humanity for generations that it would take to rebuild their culture. My targets are military alone in this war as I match wits with the defense ministers that have arisen in this weapon's shadow," Jonathan ate his meal inbetween sentences as his eyes betrayed nothing to Scarlet.  
  
Scarlet blinked, she'd been expecting at least some attempt to justify this insanity. She'd have half been open to some mad philosophy that she could respect even as she opposed it. "So what is this, some of game to you? The thousands of families who've lost their sons so you can test your new lasergun? Is it a present to daddy to show you've taken over the family business?!"  
  
"On the contrary Scarlet I intend to achieve victory in my loss. Sleeper agents outside of Cobra's military heirarchy and ideals, hypnotized world leaders, careful selection of targets, and pressure applied to the right people is creating the beginnings of a world government every bit as utopian as the charter my father created in the beginnings of the organization. The result of my terrorist activities will be the suspension of certain liberties which stand in the way of crushing crime, dissidence, and of course the very laws that allow monsters like myself to hide behind money and power," The new Cobra Commander had spent a very long time planning out the intricacies of this plan and it would go entirely according to his design, he was sure of this.  
  
"Your insane," Scarlet said with what effort she could. Still the words caught in her throat because there was something supremely sure in his voice.  
  
"No Scarlet I think you are afraid because you are aware of just how sane I am. Now please eat your lobster. It's getting cold," Jonathan said with a half smile as he thought of the time he had lost his eyes. He had been a member of the Crimson Guard even then and as an elite soldier had been sent on an assasination mission to kill the heads of a drug cartel which endangered Cobra's control over the military regime in the area. He had suceeded but the grand finale of exterminating he life essence of the El Presidante had required going through G.I. Joe's bodyguards. In the end it had been the sight of her which had allowed his opponents for the strike team's sucess to shoot a laser bolt into his eyes and burn the memory of his love into his mind forever.  
  
***  
  
Doctor Otto Moreau the Fifth was the Supreme Head of Cobra's Medical Caste and had been so since Doctor Mindbender had unfortunately chosen the wrong side in Cobra's transitional stage. He had been a member of the Human Genome Project when he had begun researching the extra-genes that had been discovered in the few remaining preserved bodies of Cobra-La's citizens when said arctic Lost world had been excavated. The tests had awed him and eventually experimentation had led to his near-death in a labratory explosion. The work funded by the new Cobra Commander had allowed him to rebuild his body with cybernetics and regeneration formula crafted from lizard and gorilla DNA. Now he was a mountain of a man standing eight feet in height with a regal red cape fluttering around the metallic sheen over his body's majority. He only had one good eye in his right as his left was replaced with a red microscope that provided him with mountains of genetic data that he required for the elaborate constructs and horrors that were born in his lab.  
  
"We are ready for you Lord Snakes," Doctor Moreau said as he pointed his golden DNA helix tipped cane toward the bubbling pit of almost unholy chemical concoctions which had been prepared over the past few years in the finest example of reverse engineering the world has ever known. If he was correct in his calculations then all of Cobra-La's genetic secrets could now be deciphered from the simple base he began with. If he was incorrect then the former leader of Cobra would be melted from the inside out and it would be no great loss as far as the mad scientist was concerned.  
  
"You will addressssss me assssss Cobra Commander!" the Serpent shouted as he hissed his fangs menacingly at the cyborg.  
  
"Of course Commander," Otto murmured even as he went back to his research consoles to get an accurate reading of the results of this test. Cobra had increasingly had less and less to do with medical research as the organization's billions were devoted to this oversized laser pistol floating above the planet. Otto had provided the Commander with the cures to AIDs, Cancer, Alheizmers, along with serums that would turn a physical weakling into a demigod and he was all but forgotten in the rush to bring the world to a crashing halt. He had no idea what his rather mad employers wished to do with the information but he was sure that restoring the Commander would give him leverage again to pursue his research as he saw fit. Otto was already considering abandoning medicine for a virus that would raise the dead to devour the living.  
  
"Now, I will at lasssssst become a man again. This day has been a decade. A mere drop in the hat for a citizen of Cobra-la but they are all dead and I sssssurvive. I ssssshall reclaim my destiny thisssss day!" the founder of Cobra threw himself into the golden liquid as his screams filled the air. The poisonous fluid would destroy utterly every last DNA cell of serpent inside the commander even as human DNA cells were grown from the cells that remained in equal upkeep to the destruction. It was quite possibly the most agonizing experience Doctor Moreau could imagine with his extremely vast intelligence.  
  
"Ahhhhhhhhhrrhh," The old Cobra Commander finally collasped on the ground naked and writhering after literally throwing himself from the pit of agony. The formula had done it's job and the former leader of the world's most dangerous organization was now completely human. His body was bald and covered with scalding scars from his experience but it was all in all, a resounding success.  
  
"Restored...I am. I can now retake my seat as master of Cobra and ruler of the planet! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The fascist dictator cackled before descending into a coughing fit.  
  
"You may find the reigns of power not so easily relinquished back to you Commander. The current holder has held it for a decade and made it a special point to keep the troops loyal to him." Doctor Moreau thought painfully of the description of life under Serpentor. The man had been a genius at military stratedgy and fearless in battle but he was also hopelessly psychotic and possessed of no patience whatsoever. It was embarrasing that the Emperor of Cobra had taken the power from it's master so swiftly. The Doctor wasn't sure the situation would repeat itself quite like it had done so before.  
  
"Nonsense! My son is fanatically loyal to me and would throw himself out an airlock at my slightest whim. I raised him that way you know. Besides who do you think has been the secret hand behind the throne that he so gallantly sits behind? ME! I am the force which has been guiding Cobra all these years through its darkest hour and only I possess the vision and guidence to lead it to its destined glory. It will be the coup de gras to the cowering masses of the Earth when I return in all my glory to inform them that Cobra has finished playing games and their choice is total annhilation or my humble minsitrations as absolute ruler for life!" Cobra Commander ranted with sadistic glea. Going over to a biological-hazard suit he placed it over his face and assumed the form of the figure that would inspire fear and envy once again in mankind. At least until he was able to recover his hood and military uniform.   
  
"Yes of course sir," Doctor Moreau had never quite understood his snake subject was completely mad before but this left little doubt in his mind.   
  
"Wait! You've seen my face! Only the Baroness, Destro, and my son have!" Cobra Commander grabbed at the service pistol to the side of the room in one of the guard's uniforms hanging up on the side.   
  
"My Lord pl..." Doctor Moreau could not get another word out of his throat before three laser bolts were put through his brain and he fell to the ground dead.  
  
"COBRRRRRRAAAAAAAA!" Cobra Commander screamed with glea as Snakes ran out of the laboratory, down the hall towards the bridge of Cobra Command Station.  
  
***  
  
"Trying to take us alive huh?" Icicle shouted even as she fired her rifle futily in the air towards the Cobra Death globes that floated about, the new and improved answer to the trouble bubbles. The G.I. Joe team was weaving in and out of the trees systems on their snowbikes which afforded them enough mobility that at least one of their pursuers had accidentally impaled himself but there were seemingly an endless number to follow him.  
  
"Oh shut up!" Beach Head shouted even as his bike did a sommersault in the air from the Cobra Death globe blowing up the ground directly in front of him. Amazingly the bike landed perfectly right side up and Infiltrator managed to fire a grenade from his launcher right into the death globe's engines, causing it to explode in a fiery burst of light.  
  
"Rock on Beach Head Kenevil!" Demolition Derby gave his commanding officer a thumbs up before suddenly the Death Globes turned back from their pursuit and left the group alone in the freezing blizzard.  
  
"Okay that's not suspicious in the slightest," Last Chance replied, following the Death Globes with her binoculars until they were well out of sight.  
  
"Well don't look at me to discount our seemingly good fortune. So what's the stratedgy Wool Head?" Infiltrator said even as he reloaded his grenade launcher in case their domed pursuers returned.  
  
"That's Beach Head Spook! We're going to keep going until we find something and that is our damn mission so we're going to follow it!" Beach Head shouted even as Punch Card coughed.  
  
"Yes solider?" Beach Head turned to the computer genius who looked like a robot-man with all the equipment he'd 'harvested' from the plane.  
  
"There's alot of atmospheric disturbance here Beach Head. I think we may have found it," Punch Card said, pointing a large mass of rocks and empty space directly in front of them.  
  
"Found what?" Beach Head asked, looking at the space.  
  
"Found Cobra's cloaked rocket pad. We're still a little ways off from being able to jam it or completely detect with one hundred percent accuracy their stealth fields but if I don't miss my guess then...well it should be right there," Punch Card gestured even as he gave a goofy sort of grin which made Beach Head want to sock the man silly.  
  
"Wipe that smile off your face," Beach Head corrected before he noticed Last Chance and Icicle were loading up. "And where do you think you're going?"   
  
"Well we've found the rocket-pad. I suggest we get the hell out of here before Cobra's goons blast us to bits and we congradulate ourselves on a job well done after phoning in an airstrike," Last Chance said happily.  
  
"No way girly girl. We're going to check out this so called disturbance, find out what the hell it really is, and then we phone in the air strike. There's no way it's going to be my ass if we drop two hundred megatons on something that aint there!" Beach Head tapped his chest and pointed to the space.   
  
"Okay, I'm game," Infiltrator said as he lit up a smoke.  
  
"You're the only one," Last Chance muttered as she reloaded her laser-rifle with a fresh set of rapid fire catridges.  
  
Hoping that Cobra hadn't spotted them, the group immediately ditched their snow-bikes to the side and began coming up the side of the snow bank. The small group of G.I. Joe commandoes didn't have to move very far until even the least observant of them could feel the 'atmospheric disturbance'. At close range Cobra's cloaking shields gave off massive amounts of static electricity that sent every hair on a person's body on end. Beach Head gestured for an all out run and counting on luck to see them through the team bolted through the electrical field and came out on the other side.  
  
"Holey Moley," Demolition Derby whistled as he got an eye full of what awaited the team.  
  
Cobra Space Platform 7# was a monument of engineering if you considered that it looked like something from those damn He-man cartoons that Bazooka used to watch all the time at Joe headquarters. Shaped like a giant Cobra coiled around the base it's risen neck and head served as the rocket tower and loading bay. Curiously Beach Head didn't notice anyone around the building, anyone alive that is. The entire place looked like it was being operated by reprogrammed obsolete BATS and some smaller more advanced non-combat machines. The place was huge and it looked like there might be thousands of the damn things, most of them carting radioactive ore from pits that were dug in the middle of the walkways throughout the base.   
  
"Well now I've seen everything," Infiltrator said as a gigantic robotic wasp carted a fuel cell over to a rocket about to be launched.  
  
"Trust me, you haven't seen nothing until you've seen time travel and cloning dead world leaders. This is a normal day for me. Keep your voice down by the way," Beach Head put away his rifle and pulled out a pistol instead.   
  
"Why? These things don't seem to notice us at all," Demolition Derby lightly wrapped his fist on the side of one of the BATs.  
  
"Those 'things' are still the equal of any five men at close quarter combat rookie. Besides we don't know whether or not someone might be able to turn them back to their less pleasant more Terminator-like personalities," Beach Head said even as he looked to Punch Card for what information the man could dig up on this strange place.  
  
"Hey Beach Head, I may be getting some mixed signals here but I don't think there's anyone at this base at all. My guess is Cobra doesn't want too many people involved who know where their refueling points are. This entire place is automated and controlled directly by encrypted signals from Cobra Command Station itself," Punch Card said as he ridiculously easily accessed the Cobra base mainframe from his position here.  
  
"That's an awful lot of guessing Dexter. In any case, our mission is done and now we can leave," Beach Head said sharply. There was something about this place which managed to unnerve even him.  
  
"Sir, I beg your pardon but I think we can end the war right here," Punch Card said as the plan flashed across his eyes. A plan so brillantly simple that it had to work.  
  
"What?" Icicle said alarmed as she looked over shoulders, used to the cold climate but even more anxious than Beach Head.  
  
"Speak your mind soldier. I haven't got all day." Beach Head clutched the grip on his pistol even tighter than before as a team of BATS hauled more radioactive ore past him.  
  
"The Rocket from what I've got here is directly guided by a feed system on Earth working in unison with the Station. All we have to do is disrupt the guidence system down here on Earth, lock them out, and it will plunge directly into the side of Cobra's headquarters. In a single instant all of Cobra will be burned up like a Turkey left in the oven for several hours too long," Punch Card was delighted at his own cleverness and hoped Beach Head would take him up on his idea.  
  
It was against the G.I. Joe ideal to seek personal glory but Beach Head knew that this would make him look good, damn good, not to mention save a lot of rough neck lives when the fireball spewer in the sky took out some other military base whenever the clock ticked down another sixty minutes. "Okay Dexter what do you need to do it and how do we get it done now?"  
  
"All I need is the main control center here and we're in business while Cobra is out of business," Punch Card began a brisk run to the base of the Cobra neck while the rest of the G.I. Joes followed....save one.  
  
The process to start rewiring the shuttle launch was a remarkably swift one which was good since it was only a few minutes until the thing lifted off towards Cobra Station and then it would be another three months until another shipment was sent down to the Siberian station. Still Punch Card had all the systems set up and he only had to cycle through the various codes Cobra had set up to protect their system from hackers before unploading the new defination of 'lethal computer virus'.   
  
"Good work soldier. I guess I was wrong about you all," Beach Head said to the four before he noticed that the sixth member of the team was missing. He got his answer to where she got to when a blue laser bolt arced through his chest and shattered the computer screen directly in front of him, frying the entire operation. As Beach Head crumbled to the ground, another martyr to the sinister machinations of Cobra Reborn, the traitor revealed herself.  
  
"I regret to inform you that you are all now prisoners of the new world order," Icicle aka Iceheart, Major in the Elite Ophis Special Operations Division of Cobra said with a sneer. A dozen combat activated BAT soldiers pouring through the door soon subdued all the G.I. Joe commandoes. They would be loaded up onboard the rocket and taken as gifts to the new Cobra Commander.  
  
Only Demolition Derby who had convinced himself that he had been falling in love with the woman, showed any reaction to the betrayal by one of their own. "You bitch,"  
  
***  
  
General Vladimir Rustavich was having the most delightful time of his life. Moscow was under martial law now with tanks on every street and the Cobra coiled through a hammer and sickle flying from every military vehicle for miles. There had been a few troubles with the locals involving gasoline bombs and the usual Stalingrad stuff but the results were relatively minor compared to the glorious representation that was his portrait hanging over the office of the Prime Minister. Vladimir was young for a general and had only been a new officer when his parents had joined in the revolution to restore communism to Russia. They'd both been shot by firing squad for their part in it....oh well no sweat off his back as far as he was concerned. Power belonged to those in the world who had the power to take it and with the power he had he could take all of Russias underneath his wing. If he knew the proper asses to kiss and the paperwork to file then he would probably find himself one of the number one people in the New World Order.   
  
"It was like you always said father. The true purpose of a soldier is less about knowing how to kill than knowing who to kill, when, and how publically," Vladimir smiled and then leaped back into the leather Lazy-boy chair of the office he'd had brought in to replace Putin's old chair. He was still a young man barely into his thirties and who knew how far he could go in the terrorist organization if he set his mind to it. The first thing he'd do would be to offer to nuke the United States until they surrendered after he'd finished solidifying his control over Russia. Cobra hated the Americans almost as much as his father and mother had and while it was nothing personal with Vladimir he figured a few million deaths would probably insinuate him with the pseudo-nazi's quite well. Just for the hell of it, the general spun around his chair until the personal holo-unit Putin had installed buzzed.   
  
"Lenin! Is a phone no good anymore?" Vladimir pushed a few buttons on the side of the desk until the projector lifted up from the desk. It had been installed so that the President might have a direct feed to the October Guard but Vladimir had hijacked it for communicating with his troops in Siberia. A holographic image of Colonel Blitzer appeared in the midst of what was obviously a bad blizzard.  
  
"General Rustavich!" The Colonel saluted the man, he was a big burly fellow standing seven feet tall with a huge beard. Rustavich was sure the man would have been promoted to General long ago if he didn't look so much like a bear.  
  
"Supreme Commander Rustavich! I intend to promote many people to General now. Have you suceeded in eliminating our little anachronisms from the Cold War?" Vladimir said as he wrinkled his nose a bit. He had himself lasted only six months in the October Guard himself thanks to his father's connections before the political situation had warranted their disbanding. Colonel Red Star had nearly destroyed his career with the reports he had filed and Vladimir dearly hoped he could have the man's head pickled for his desk.  
  
"Yes...Supreme Commander. I come to report that we have suceeded in destroying the October Base and killing eighty percent of the Guard," Colonel Blizter looked fatigued and disheartened by the entire matter.  
  
"Only eighty percent? I gave you a hundred times their number to eradicate them off the map!" Vladimir had unfortunately failed to take any airforce bases intact at present and had sent infantry and tanks to finish the job.  
  
"It was more like thirty times their number sir and we've suffered nearly twenty causalties per man we've managed to kill. We're awaiting reinforements from the allied bases in order to continue the pursuit," Colonel Blitzer had been trained as a soldier his entire life to follow orders. The fact he know followed a pompous fool who ordered him to kill his fellow Russians changed nothing of this.  
  
"Strike that now! They are scattered and in the most hostile country in Russia! I order you to finish them all off immediately! We cannot afford to spare the men for this little crusade of yours and you should feel honored that you are involved in what will prove to be the most glorious victory of the United Soviet Cobra Republic!" Vladimir didn't want to admit that the loyalist forces of General Denete were managing to hold their own well. The Ukraine furthermore was preparing to ally with him to wage war on his 'traitors'. Combine that with the Chechyneans wishing his head for all the things he'd done in his operations there AND allying themselves with Cobra and Vladimir was in a tenuous position unless he could deliver the October Guard as an offering to the new Cobra Commander to use his super weapon to wipe out his enemies.  
  
"Yes...Supreme Commander," Colonel Blitzer sighed weakly.  
  
"Look at the bright side, you're now a general!" Vladimir made a very generous gesture he thought before turning off the holocom and ordering the finest prostitutes in Moscow to be delivered up to his office.  
  
***  
  
Lady Jaye was a very talented physician when she wanted to be and while she had never been exactly friends with the Russian lady, she'd developed quite a bit of respect for the tenacious girl in their few meetings. After treating her as best she could, she went over to Flint and explained what the October Guardswoman had explained in the midst of her chatty field medicine. A few other G.I. Joe team mates had managed to arrive at the rendeverous point including Roadblock and Chuckles but Allison wasn't sure how many would reach the point with what she now knew.  
  
"Apparently the political situation here in Russia is alot more volatile than the initial reports let on. The government we got the okay to travel through on was publically executed just a few hours ago by some general Dania refuses to call anything but the Madman. The murders on television weren't exactly the most reassuring things to watch but got the Guard prepared for something wrong and they managed to give a pretty damn good fight against Russia's regular military that attacked not so long afterwards. There's a few survivors who are trudging through the snow around here but nothing that'll make attacking the Cobra's base worthwhile with what we've seen of their firepower," Lady Jaye finished her explanation and took a sip from Snow Job's coffee.  
  
"You got all that in twenty minutes?" Flint asked incredously.  
  
"It's a girl thing," Lady Jaye grinned.  
  
"Well I'm officially calling this mission a failure. If this place is as crawling with Snake Wannabees and the information about the base's location is lost then there's no point in risking our lives trying to take it out. We'll find another way to get at Cobra," Flint had taken an awful lot of risks in his life but he wasn't stupid. If the Enemy was willing to throw this much at their opposite number they would spare just as little expense to get at them if identified.  
  
"You can do that?" Quick Kick blinked in shock.  
  
"That's why I'm the commanding officer," Flint looked quite proud.  
  
"Then why the hell did no one call off any of the missions against Ancient Egyptian gods or the giant blob!" Quick Kick shrugged his shoulders.  
  
"Let's never bring those up again Quick Kick. I'll give the kill call to the G.I. Joes moving into the country through other means and we'll await new orders once word is relayed back to General Hawk. In the meantime we'll try and find the rest of the October Guard and relay them with Daina back to civilization. My guess is they'll want to be a part of our next counter attack," Flint shook his head. He didn't like being with his wife in Snake Central again with no backup and precacious few armaments but there was no one he'd rather be with.  
  
"It looks like they found us Flint!" Snow Job shouted and pointed to the same direction Daina had come from. There a single tank rolling across the snow and a number of battered Russian soldiers walking along side it. One having been maimed in the conflict and his missing arm bandaged up while he chugged an assault rifle in the other. Flint was surprised to find that it was Colonel Brekhov aka Red Star who had been appointed the new General of the October Guard, the Colonet had been certain he would have fought to the bitter end.  
  
"Greetings General!" Flint approached the man and looked over the group. He'd been briefed on the top men of the new Guard and recognized the survivors were all members of them. There was General Red Star of course but also Horrorshow from the original Guard who'd been promoted to tank division commander. Beside him was a beautiful svete woman with short blonde hair, Major Firebird who was an elite special purpose operative who just happened to be Brekhov's daughter. Silverfang was a long brown haired Siberian who was travelling with a few wolves that looked like they'd had their lunch on the traitors. The final member of the group was Sergeant Karvimov who was if reports could be believed a former circus performer who single handidly saved future President Putin from a Cobra leftover assaisin.  
  
"Hail Colonel Flint. We come to you under the gravest of circumstance. I am pleased to see that Daina made it to you. Will she live?" Red Star asked in a tone that Flint hoped was simply bad English. Flint knew they'd been briefly married after the October Guard broke up but he'd felt betrayed by her active support of the new democratic government and they'd divorced not long after the revolution attempt of the communists.  
  
"I heard. The question is what the hell are we going to do about it?" Flint said, feeling other words were unnecessary.  
  
"The answer will not likely please you. Our best estimation is the remaining fleeing October Guardsmen are dead and the attacking army group led by Colonel Orlock Blitzer is going to be upon us using the very technology the Americans sold to Russia to support our failing military. I'm afraid they will attack en force with no mercy," Red Star shook his head.  
  
"Wow...that sucks." Quick Kick summed up everyone's feelings on the matter.  
  
"A Joe will do what a Joe gotta do," Roadblock said even as he looked to Flint.  
  
Flint felt his head, this mission was getting worse and worse with each passing moment. He did not want to die away from his kids in a former communist country, he deserved at the very least to die in someplace exotic. "We're practically unarmed here. Is the armaments stash you were supposed to prepare still there?"  
  
"It is untouched," Colonel Brekhov said with a nod.  
  
"Okay, then it looks like we're about to face our Alamo," Flint knew the options were pretty darn slim here.  
  
"Let's not forget that Davey Crockett died at the Alamo," Quick Kick reminded the group.  
  
"What's the Alamo?" Major Firebird whispered to Horrowshow, who just shrugged his shoulders. 


	10. Cobra Commander returns to power

Chapter 10  
  
The original Cobra Commander strolled jollily into the bridge of Cobra Command Station with a squadron of the elite Crimson Guard. He had to give his son credit for finding very stupid but extremely talented individuals who couldn't be bought, seduced, or intimidated to betray Cobra. Of course that's what he thought he'd done EVERY time that they betrayed him in some fashion thanks to being bought, seduced, or intimidated! Cobra Commander nevertheless controlled his anger for once and took a look at the huge glittering array of pannels, psychopants, and machinery that even now was ticking down to the next laser canon shot that would reduce some poor foolish nation's finest to moldering slag.  
  
"All rise for the Lord Snakes," one of the Crimson Guard shouted before Cobra Commander grabbed him by the neck and said.  
  
"That is Cobra Commander! We're having a re-org," Cobra Commander said before tossing him away. That was the problem with being a nobleman from Cobra-La, the names didn't sound nearly as intimidating in the translation.  
  
"Ah the true Cobra Commander arrives. I see you've molted recently. I'd say it's an improvement but I rather perferred seeing you crawl on your belly," The Baroness said turning around and Cobra Commander almost had her shot where she stood. Still there was something about that flashing raven hair, those reflecting crystal glasses, and the fact she was so ruthless since she'd arrived inspired Cobra Commander to be generous. He'd just have Destro killed instead of her and be there to comfort her when it was over.  
  
"Baroness not even your half-wit could spoil my day. Look at what my inspired leadership has alot brought to us! Half the nations of the world tremble at our feet begging to be allowed into the Pax Serpentica while the other half futily try to defend themselves from fire in the sky! The traitors have been punished and very soon like a descending Semetic God I will return to the Earth to place upon my head a crown of vine leaves in reward for the great things that have been done," Cobra Commander could practically see it now with a collosus of his to replace the Statue of Liberty and the Cobra Hood in Paris in place of the Eiffel Tower.  
  
"Funny Cobra Commander I was under the impression that you had nothing to do with it," The Baroness looked down to the Earth which seemed unchanged from space despite the massive chaos that had resulted in every channel in the United States being restricted to official use. It was enough to sicken the Baroness Decobray on a very personal level.  
  
"That is a fat lie!" Cobra Commander retorted sharply before looking uneasily at the men behind him. "What I mean to say is while I have been restricted to a strictly behind the scenes position for the most part this last decade I have been insturmental in guiding us back to our present prominence. While I will give credit where credit is do to the many loyal, decent, hardworking, Cobra soldiers who have followed orders through my figurehead..." Cobra Commander gently motioned his hand to the fawning fools about him "It was of course me all along."  
  
Shareware coughed something that sounded like 'dull pit'  
  
"Eh?" Cobra Commander turned to the cybrog.  
  
"Nothing your Eminence....freakingskelatorwannabe....my cybernetics are just picking up some static from the Dreadnoks swamp base," Shareware began to put on screen.  
  
"Excellent, my loyal Dreadnoks. I wonder what they have been up to for the past thirteen years.....errr of course I know being as I sent them out on their many missions in my glory, that were sucessful," Cobra Commander covered his ignorance of the daily operations. He was a vision type individual and while he had always allowed things that were unimportant to be handled by his son like rebuilding his armies, it was his will guiding Cobra as always, even if only by proxy.  
  
***  
  
Zartan walked up to Buzzer's room and turned his head in disgust to the flagrant display of decadence it had become. The very fact that he had managed to make enough money that some poor foolish girl had decided to 'shack up' with him was enough to shake Zartan's faith in a loving god. Of course Zartan had never been particularly blessed but he was sure out there the fawning masses were living a life to their tastes thanks to his influence.   
  
"I don't even want to know about the N'Sync poster," Zartan ripped down the image of the boyband and tore it shreds before trying vainly to clean up the pink clothes and empty beer can infested room until he finally simply pulled the bedsheets off with all of their junk at once. Laying himself down on the now bare King sized bed, Zartan stared up at the ceiling and layed his head then to the side to avoid looking into the mirror that Buzzer had placed there.  
  
'Ten million dollars,' the very figure of it disturbed the mercanary for some reason. It was an impossibly high figure for even one of G.I. Joe's inner circle and it was more money than the Dreadnoughts had from even their biggest paying operations. Zartan would discover what the reason was for the new Commander's interest in the girl was and he'd be sure to use that as a lever to cracking open his skull. The swamp dweller had quite a few things he wished to do before he died including carry on his research in genetics and robotics from a nice darkened mansion somewhere far away from the United States. Perhaps when he'd made his fortune and achieved his revenge he'd buy Cobra Island and build his dream house there, that would be the height of irony.  
  
"Don't make a move Swamp Rat," the voice of the private grunt who'd been travelling with him to this gaudy manor echoed out. Zartan furthermore heard the pistol chamber click which signalled he was probably pointing it at his skull.  
  
"You have got to be joking," Zartan turned his head to look at Playboy. The man's fear was under control but he was obviously terrified of the Dreadnok master, as well he should have been. Zartan could have easily gotten away the weapon and shot the man in the skull before he could do anything but he had been having a relaxing day and was interested in how this particular fool got away from the new recruits to his organization.  
  
"I've never been more serious in my life scumbag," Playboy swallowed the air, he had no idea why the hell Gung Ho and Dialtone had chosen him for this particular part of the mission but he was pretty sure that it was a really stupid idea to point a gun at a man who had once been on the FBI's most wanted for multiple mass murder, espionage, sabotage, and grand theft of illegal ordinance.  
  
"Hahahahahahahahaha," Zartan couldn't help but burst out laughing, it was a frightening thing given the sound of Zartan's voice "Your more pathetic than the posturing peacock whose currently in charge of Cobra!"  
  
"You don't much care for the new administration Zartan? I'd think a loyal stooge like you would be happy with the way Cobra is kicking around the world," Playboy stuck to the script as he moved slightly back to give Zartan some room.   
  
"Stooge? I should kill you right now for that Joe. It was the biggest mistake of my life ever involving myself with the penny-ante antics of Cobra Commander and his only slightly less pathetic successor Serpentor. Serpentor may have been a lunatic anachronism but at least he was an enjoyable one to work for. Cobra has always been the poor white man's excuse for a terrorist organization. It had some good days but that was in spite of the leadership not because of it," Zartan smiled even as he looked at the man and debated on how to kill him.  
  
***  
  
"Dialtone this has got to be the dumbest idea I've seen since Cobra Commander tried to kill everyone with a funhouse," Gung Ho said as he stuck his foot on the hogtied body of Torch, squirming on the ground where the Cajun had beat him silly. The other Dreadnoks in the house might check in any time now and it wouldn't take long for the others to figure out that they were chasing a a bunch of alligators with Dialtone's sensor relay which they'd been tracking the Joe team with. Then again maybe Gung Ho was overestimating their intelligence.  
  
"Well it's about the only idea I can think of Gung Ho and I can only hope that the Cobra leadership is as arrogant, pigheaded, and stupid as the previous one was," Dialtone said as he relayed Zartan's conversation with Playboy up to Cobra Command Station. Sadly, Dialtone couldn't just relay the space stations location to G.I. Joe HQ and have the thing nuked from orbit which had been their original plan along with calling for backup because the Cobra system required codes that beating Torch for would have been too loud to get. Admittadly that Dialtone couldn't think of anything better than mocking the leadership of Cobra in hopes they sent someone to kick Zartan's ass indicated he wouldn't be getting a promotion anytime soon.  
  
"I'm not holding any hopes out for this, that's all I'm saying," Gung Ho lifted up his rifle and made sure it was pointed at the door while he blockaded the window. The very worst that was going to happen to them was that they were going to kill alot of Aussies before they went down themselves, Gung Ho was going to make sure of that.  
  
***  
  
"LESS PATHETIC?! SERPENTOR!?" Cobra Commander nearly pulled out his gun and shot the control pannel as he heard Zartan's words. This affront could not be allowed to go unavenged and he would have it repaid in spades.  
  
"I think he is quite apt in his summation of the situation...Commander," The Baroness chuckled as she drunk in the power of her restored position. There was a part of her which had always long for death and she knew that baiting the sick fool was something that routinely brought her to the inch of doom. It had started with cutting her wrists at age nine, had moved on to the revolutionaries in the country who kidnapped her when she was fifteen, until a seasoned warrior at nineteen she had met with Destro and become his lover.  
  
"Do not try my patience overmuch Baroness. Many a mortal leader has found out that even Cobra Commander's infinite generosity can be taxed to it's limits on the best of days," Cobra Commander took a moment to decide what to do to repay the man who had been his chief commando leader since the early days when he'd begun formulating the revolution to wipe out the million years of festering human civilization to raise something entirely different from the ashes.  
  
"As you wish Commander," The Baroness was pleased to see that he seemed to be much the same man that she'd known when she'd left for all those dark years in prison. Destro had come back an entirely different man who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders like Atlas rather than defiantly cursing the Heavens as Lucifer.  
  
"Shareware! Turn the space station around and take aim at the source of this communication! Destroy it and everything around it!" Cobra Commander shouted to the cyborg even as the bridge crew trembled at his presence. The crew had been seduced to Cobra by promises of revenge, a better world, wealth, or a simple place to belong by their leader Sharpe. Few of them were prepared for the terrible madness which was born in the turmoil of Cobra Commander's soul. The patriarch of the world's most ruthless terrorist organization was known to be insane to even those closest to them but it was a divine madness whose sheer force of will and desire to transform the world with his own hands was strong enough to actually do so. To know that sort of passion was to be consumed by it and it had led thousands to willingly throw their lives down for him even when it was solely to kill many more.  
  
"Uhhh Commander, we're about to destroy the Loyalist Chinese forces with Jupiter's Thunder. Do you really think..." Shareware started to say before Cobra Commander interrupted him.  
  
"ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY ORDERS!? SHOOT HIM!" The bio-suit wearing dictator pointed as the Crimson Guard lifted up their weapons and took aim, slower than their ungodly speed only because they were perfectly in tune with the knowledge it was fear that the Commander wished to install not death.  
  
"No Master please! I'll do whatever you command!" Share Ware fell to the ground and covered his head, knowing that in his heart he meant what he said despite the stark terror causing his lips to sputter.  
  
"Belay the previous order! I'm glad to see that some discipline still remains within the ranks. Now please kindly point the big death-ray at Zartan's house and snap to the incineration of him like a good boy," Cobra Commander causally waved his hand like he was shooing away a dog.  
  
Share Ware crawled terrified into his console seat and re-adjusted the space station towards the Dreadnoks headquarters as the timer began clicking down towards zero.  
  
"I see you haven't lost your subtlety Commander," The Baroness said off handidly as she sat on the arm of the Cobra Commander's throne.  
  
"Subetly Baroness is the most overrated commodity a leader can possess. It's actually in my memoirs that the best thing a leader can do is scream loudy and carry a big gun. At least until he can afford people who can carry the guns for him," Cobra Commander walked over and sat down in the throne of his son as he placed his hands together and gazed lovingly down at the planet. Twenty years moving from one slime covered anus of humanity from another formulating descent among the peasants of humanity, ten years wearing the skin of an animal, his race extinct but for himself, and it was all worth it to know that the world was HIS.   
  
"C-Commander we're getting another spy report from Agent Iceheart," Shareware said as he examined the countless bits of data that were streaming into his head directly from Cobra's supercomputers.   
  
"Ah yes, the girl whose been assigned to the G.I. Joe unit. An inspired bit of work recruiting that one. Has she delivered the G.I. Joes to the facility yet? I want to feed them to wild animals. No wait we don't have any wild animals in Space. I want to dump them in space with a limited airsupply and watch them explode in a vacuum," Cobra Commander licked his lips under the bio-suit. He'd read for years every single report which came through to Cobra as he plotted and schemed and prepared for the day that he would have his revenge on the entire world which had schemed against him in his five hundred years of life.  
  
"Actually Commander people don't really e...." A young technician started to say before the Cobra Commander snapped his fingers and one of the Crimson Guard shot him in the chest.  
  
"Does anyone else not get whose in charge here? No? I didn't think so," Cobra Commander said, the discipline he'd have to enforce to get the group back into shape would possibly take months. Oh well there'd be thous...no millions....more to replace them when they were finished smashing the resistance down on the Earth. Cobra Commander's first act would be to institute state-run boarding schools and mandatory Cobra Youth programs to train away the culture that parents imposed with their future. In a few generations Cobra Commander would transform the entire planet into the image of a loyal prosperous society with him as it's Emperor, then perhaps he'd turn to space and explore new horizons for conquest.  
  
"At last report she was having the shuttle take them up with a horde of BATS to keep them under control. No this report is about G.I. Joe headquarters. It's pretty choppy and seems to be done in a hurry but the codes seem to check out and it lists the location of G.I. Joe's new headquarters," Shareware was too terrified to actually point out that only 60% of the codes were accurate. If the Commander detected something was wrong he was sure that he'd get himself shot and killed in the process.  
  
"Excellent. Prepare an all out assault under my son's authority. It is time to make a formal statement that G.I. Joe is the inferior to Cobra in battle and leave their bodies ground up into dust for the entire world to see," Cobra Commander relished the chance of watching each member of the cursed team and their successors dying in agony. He'd ordered the pictures of every G.I. Joe and October Guardsman slain in this conflict put in his room above his nest to help see him through the night, it'd probably be the only part he kept when he redecorated.  
  
"Y-yes sir," Shareware said as he made it so.  
  
"You should just blast them off the face of the Earth from orbit Commander. I am sick of seeing our troops slain by that team of nationalist fools," The Baroness said with a sigh, she'd hoped near to hear the name of the super patriot group again.  
  
"I can assure you Baroness that after today the G.I. Joe-Cobra conflict will be a thing of the past. As for burning them from the sky I want you to know that Jupiter's Thunder is far too quick and easy for the delaying of my destiny. Still...." Cobra Commander let his words train off as the laser canon's timer reached zero. The entire station shook as the cloaking device flickered and the unbelievably powerful nuclear blast sailed upon the Earth and Cobra's sensors brought up the image of the dome like explosion that resulted.  
  
"It makes a very pretty fireball doesn't it?"  
  
***  
  
25 seconds later.  
  
"What the hell was that!?" General Hawk shouted as he held onto the table he was nearby. The shockwaves of Jupiter's thunder had echoed in the form of earthquakes as far as Washington D.C. Every single one of the nightmarish device furthermore burned a hole through the ozone which probably would take years to recover from. Still the military man had never been quite so close to the doomsday weapon's activation and needed to be told what America's satelites picked up on the latest usage of it.  
  
"Sir it appears that Cobra Command Station fired their latest blast at the Dreadnok's headquarters in Lousiana. Emergency personell are already moving to deal with the situation created in the cities nearby it," Mainframe ticked off the information as the image came up of the area. All that was left of that section of the bayou was a crater.  
  
"My God. Scarlet, Snake Eyes, Dialtone...Gung Ho..." Duke rattled off the list of names of the people that were on a mission there. Was Cobra actually that insane to use a weapon like this just to kill six G.I. Joe? In his heart Duke actually knew that they were and bit his lip at the prospect of his friends being in that inferno.   
  
"Is there any chance they could have made it out in time?" Conrad asked with a bitter bite of his lip.  
  
"I'm sorry Duke but everything for a mile radius around ground zero is ashes. We had a firm fix on Dialtone's signal when the thing went up. They're gone," Mainframe shook his head even as the rest of the G.I. Team set around the room, mourned. The Starbuster war as it would be so cutely called by the media years later when the wounds had healed was eating up good men like fruit cup at a banquet.  
  
"I'm sorry Duke but we have to think of the living now," General Hawk said, trying to push down his own feelings on this horror.   
  
"Sir, we're getting a response back from Cobra Command. They're sending the full sum of their forces to attack the dummy G.I. Joe location," one of the computer jokeys said up to Mainframe and General Hawk. The men were frankly scared at this point and morale was at an all time low in the United States. General Hawk didn't want to be the man who went down in history as placing the United States under martial law but desertion and escalating tensions made it a question of whether it was the better option to do it now or when he no longer could contain the situation if he did.  
  
"General I'd like permission to lead the assault against the snakes," Duke turned immediately to General Hawk as the Commander of the Military shook his head.  
  
"I need you to help deal with the domestic situation Duke. This is the best break we've had yet if we can capitalize on it right. Colonel Falcon will be the one to lead the assembled G.I. Joe and regular military forces," General Hawk said as he tried not to think of the other reason Falcon was leading the counter-attack. If God forbid the G.I. Joe leader were to fail in this mission then Hawk would need Duke to be there to try a last ditch suicide assault on Cobra Station with a slim chance of suceeding with projected plans.  
  
"Are you sure he's up to this General?" Duke asked his stepfather with all the certainty he could.  
  
General Hawk had been the official military leader of the nation's most top secret team for years and he'd been required to make some uncomfortable decisions in his time, including court marshalling the sun he'd raised to wear the uniform of the Green beret because no one else was qualified to do so. Now he was possibly sending that very same flesh and blood to face the frontlines of the enemy they were losing the war to. General Hawk had last cried at his father's funeral when he was seven and he'd save his next tears for his son only when he was confirmed dead. "Yes Duke, I do. I do indeed,"  
  
***  
  
"So how did you get involved with Cobra?" Tim Layha the technician said on his coffee break. Cobra Command's station's generator was the most efficent nuclear device ever designed by human hands and required tending by the absolute best in the world. Admittadly Tim and the other traitors in the outfit that did tend the power plant weren't the best but they were damn close. The Station worked using the same rocks that were used in the M.A.S.S. device that they'd managed to synthesize and find other pockets of across the Earth but was a hundred times more efficent. It was a massive series of thousands of red glowing rods filling a gravity-less chamber like a chandelier that the pair was currently gazing at through their protective window in the monitoring room.  
  
"It was the usual story I suppose. College graduate prodigy nuclear physicist falls in with the wrong crowd. College graduate nuclear phycisist becomes political radical before they tell her to make bomb. She makes bomb and finds out is loyalty test for big bad super-group. You?" Alexandra Nevens said as she sipped her coffee.  
  
"Gambling debts," Tim said as he heard the door swish open. Alexandra was about twelve years younger than him and a real cutie. He wasn't exactly sure she'd dig an older man who wasn't all that great shakes to look at compared to the virile soldiery about. Buit it was worth a try since he could hold a conversation with her and not get get lost.  
  
"What the..." Alexandra said, looking at the figure standing in the door frame before she barrelled against the side of the computer consoles with a laser blast in her chest. Tim barely got the chance to squeeze his coffee in horror before a blast struck him in the side of the skull and he too hit the ground, dead as a doornail.  
  
Snake Eyes then walked causally in and shut the door behind him before locking it. Snake Eyes looked at the two unarmed civilians who lied on the ground, killed in cold blood before he kicked them away from the computer console. Snake Eyes had never felt guilt for killing servants of Cobra and he wasn't about to start now. Vietnam had ruined the ninja's sense of alot of things but he knew what had to be done here. Cobra had to die.  
  
'Of course it can't be f-ing simple now can it!' Snake Eyes thought as he stared at the computer consoles that unfortunately after a few minutes he was quite certain would never allow him to interfere with Cobra's generator system.   
  
"The code to activate the self-destruct system is 'Gone with the Wind' Snake Eyes," a soft feminine voice said behind him. Snake Eyes spun around, shocked that his senses had not picked up the woman's entrance. He cursed himself when he realized that it was the Commander of the Crimson Guard, Fallen Angel. She was said to be the most deadly assaisin presently in Cobra's aresenal. Still his mind registered her words and signed to her, hoping that she understood what he was saying.  
  
"Why?" Snake Eyes asked in the silent tongue.  
  
"You're lucky Stormshadow's students trained us in that, at least before I advanced beyond them. The Cobra Commander has betrayed the cause that I so dearly wanted to be a part of til I died because of it. He even now is cavorting with one of the enemy like a common sailor with his whore," Fallen Angel gritted her teeth at the scorn that she felt toward the man she'd convinced herself she was falling in love with. Mark her words though he would pay in every drop of his blood and his dream with it.  
  
Snake Eyes tested out the self destruct code and then typed 'N' to the question 'Do you wish to sound an alarm that you are destroying this station Y/N?'  
  
"You will have to kill Cobra Commander himself to make sure that he doesn't turn off the self-destruct system Snake Eyes. It will not take long for technicians in other parts of the station to detect the problems with the reactor," Fallen Angel said with a smile.  
  
"And what about you?" Snake Eyes asked in sign.  
  
"I have my own plans," Fallen Angel chuckled.  
  
-Charlemagne 


	11. Cobra Commander's revenge

Chapter 11  
  
Scarlet let the dreams fill her mind of the warm caresses and sense of comfort that came with being with someone whom you could know would be there for you for every day of your life, no matter what, unconditionally. The Dream transformed itself drastically as in the midst of love she found herself wrapped in a choking vice of a serpent that constricted around her throat and still looked into her eyes with the same adulation and love that it had looked at her when it had been human. Unable to breath Scarlet finally awoke with a start in the bed and stared face to face with the figure that was pointing a pistol at the pair.  
  
"Great," Scarlet kicked the gun from his hands and moved with a somersault over his head. With a grab of his throat, she threw him onto the ground with a thud and wrapped his head in a vice. Taking a look at Jonathan who lied sleeping peacefully for what was probably the first time in years, she tried to shake away the memories that flooded her mind. While her undergarments weren't the best of wear for battle, she donned a robe to the side and dragged her prisoner outside the room as she took the pistol and stuck it into his back.  
  
"Destro, how good to see you again," Scarlet said with a smile even as she poked the gun extremely hard into spine.  
  
"Ah yes Lady Scarlet, I must say this is an unexpected pleasure," the arms dealer's expression was unreadable underneath the mask as always.  
  
"You can can it tin can. Why were you trying to shoot me?" Scarlet was closer to breakdown than she'd ever been in her life. She'd had a good family, a sucessful career, and while she'd faced more dangers than anyone in the world had a right to she was not going to crack because of this situation's...peculiarities.  
  
"On the contrary I wasn't trying to kill you. I was trying to kill him!" Destro said as he searched the hallways for Cobra personell. Unfortunately while Cobra Command Station worked in twenty four hour shifts beyond Earth time, the halls had been deliberately evacuated by the order of their leader.   
  
"Oh," Scarlet let her death grip loosen slightly even as she kept tight on the trigger.  
  
"I can assure you that when I had heard the Commander was debriefing a G.I. Joe this was hard....ahhh!" Destro's head cracked against the bulkheads as Scarlet pointed the gun instead as his face.  
  
"Hardy har har har," Scarlet who had never been a violent woman despite her profession had a very serious urge to execute the man for the hundreds of people that had died because of his weapons let alone the new threat Cobra posed.  
  
"You're right, that was crude of me. I can only blame the sheer insanity of these last past few days for my lapse in manners," Destro rose from the ground and straightened his attire. Destro's current costume was a platnium mask with a glittering chain mail like armor and Dracula like blue cape which cut an impressive figure even if he did look ridiculous.  
  
"Yeah well we're all having a really crappy month if you can believe it. So I take it you don't agree with the new order?" Scarlet didn't like langage but again this was an exceptional set of circumstances.  
  
"You take correctly Lady Scarlet. In the garden of Eden the serpent Ophis tempted Eve to lead Adam to corruption and here the situation seems to be duplicating itself. The Baroness has embraced whole heartedly the family of the Morningstar's crusade and they have restored my holdings, my family name as I negioate once again with the elite of my island, and dangle the carrot of serving an honorable war of conquest to make up for the years of lightless solitude that filled my days in that dark prison I was condemned to," Destro stared at the ground and clenched his fists so tight he was certain he could break them with his gauntlets.  
  
"And?" Scarlet said waving her gun lightly.  
  
"I have lost my stomach for it all. Even if Lady Fortune allowed me the chance to murder all my rivals for the throne of Cobra and I was in charge of the entire world as it's dictator and king, it would be not enough to make up for the endless sameness that I endured in three empty walls and a steel door. It has to stop Scarlet and I will not go back to that cold dark place again!" Destro was on the verge of hysteria and pointed his metal finger at Scarlet, through her and to the figure which lied beyond the metal door.  
  
That Scarlet hadn't expected to hear, she'd never thought prison would make anything out of the slime of Cobra. "You want freedom Destro? It's going to take more than just a pistol to do it. Where are the world leaders being held and what is the key to knocking out Jupiter's Thunder?" Scarlet asked even as she kept the weapon squarley trained on him.  
  
"The Earth's overthrown leadership are located in the flash-tanks down below. The Process is an extensive one but when it is complete then the Earth will be flooded with Cobra sympathizers who will work in both the opposition and the new government to transform the planet into their equivalent of Heaven. A place I won't have to remind you will be my version of Hell and hopefully yours," Destro pointed his finger at Scarlet accusingly. It was impossible to believe but he actually for once had doubts about a G.I. Joe's loyalty.  
  
Scarlet thought about Cobra Commander's...Jonathan's promises. Jonathan had been sincere in offering to take her and her kids, be their father, and make them a part of his family just as surely as he wished to become part of theirs. Scarlet knew that this was a pipe dream though and at heart the man that she still loved was a very sick man. His words about making them princes and all the rest that had sprung from the heart of the words he told her were fantasies born from his delusions and there was nothing real in the end for her or her children or the very world. She'd allowed herself to believe it for a few hours but she'd never accepted it in her heart nor would she ever. "They have to be stopped Destro,"  
  
"Good. I don't know how to disable the death-laser but I believe that problems can be dealt with when the solution presents itself. Come with me to the armory, some captured G.I. Joe prisoners have just been docked onboard, and I believe they will prove quite useful," Destro said as he waved her towards an elevator that was just down the hall.  
  
"Just make sure that I get a decent weapon. I can't stand snake equipment," Scarlet smiled briefly with a sad undertone and looked at the doorway one last time.  
  
"You have no idea how disconcerting it is to hear from Cobra personell how improved their equipment was when they stopped purchasing their weapons from MARS armaments. Then again I must admit for a ninety countries across the Globe, for more than two decades, I was the lowest bidder," Destro gave an ironic stare with his eyes even as they prepared for what was to be the most dramatic rescue the world would ever know.  
  
***  
  
"Has somebody been watching too many Rambo movies in your leadership?" Quick Kick said as he looked at the armaments supply left for the G.I. Joe team and the surviving October Guard. There were grenades, rocket launchers, heavy explosives, tank shells, crates and crates of ammunition, along with a few aircraft missles the martial arts master thought. The little cubby-hole of a Russian bunker dug underneath one of the many ice covered hills contained enough firepower to arm a group ten times the size of the G.I. Joe team.  
  
"After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia was left with more bullets than bread. President Putin wishes to update Russia's military into a less infantry based force and more high tech opponent. Unfortunately that means they have to dispose of as much of this stuff as possible....so giving it to you seemed to be a good idea," Daina said with a smile even as she looked at Quick Kick.   
  
"Great, we're facing the largest force any of us has ever faced yet with Gorbachev-era junk," Flint shook his head even as he checked out one of the rifles.  
  
"Don't mock the weaponry Colonel. The material here was made for the October Guard at it's height and is the solidest yet still around in Russia," Red Star said with a snap to the G.I. Joe leader. Even missing an arm he was a formidable presence in the group and Flint had to express his admiration for the nationalist. Of all the Joes Flint had been the most like him and Red Star hadmany admirable qualities as far as the midwestern leader was concerned.  
  
"Thank you, I'll stick to my javellins. I don't think missle lobbing with my bare hands is exactly the best way to fight the enemy. No offense Chuckles," Lady Jaye looked at the rocket then smiled at the huge blonde.  
  
"Hmmmm?" Chuckles said, looking up as he shook a very large case of grenades.  
  
"Snow Job do you have anything on that old sensor array here?" Flint called even as he simply tossed away the rifle and took the ammunition that would fit into his rifle. Given the Russians stole most of their designs from the G.I. Joe he was pretty sure it would work and if not then he wouldn't last long enough out there to regret the decision.  
  
"Nothing yet Flint. Wait...I think I've got something. Ah jeez. Yeah I've got them alright. They're about an hour a half away but they're packing a third world nation even with a third of the number taken off that Horrorshow claims they took." Snow Job described the sight which looked like the final level of Space Invaders.  
  
"What do you mean claims you Yankee..." Horrorshow nearly pulled Snow Job's head from his body before he was stopped by Firebird, she was something of the team mascott and had been even when she was a little girl.  
  
"Gentlemen...please...shut up," Lady Jaye did her best to be civil to the group.  
  
"What kind of tactics can we expect out of this wacko leading them?" Flint turned to Red Star even as he tried to go over what exactly they could do in an hour and a half that would make any difference in this battle. It and the fact that they had better damn well make him a General for this were the chief thoughts running through Flint's mind.  
  
"Colonel Blitzer is an idiot Master Soldier Flint. If Napoleon were to rise from the grave and attack Russia today then he would attack him head on rather than as his Cossack ancestors would. I must stress to you that to be stupider than they is a feat that requires a great deal Sir," Firebird said as she crossed her arms. Sadly the beauty had inherited her father's biases as well as his skills.  
  
"Okay then since we know he'll attack us straight we can set land mines, prepare the bombs here perhaps as some timed explosives, and perhaps set up the anti-infantry fire to make ourselves a fairly impenetrable fortress," Flint knew that if you had the right equipment and terrain that it was concievable to hold out against the numbers they were going to be facing.  
  
"It's no good Colonel Flint. Blitzer may be a fool but eventually impatience will win in the end and he will simply shell the hilltop we live in to the base dust that formed it. We must deal with their tanks first," Red Star shook his sole remaining fist in the air with anger.  
  
"Yeah I was going to say that," Quick Kick smirked.  
  
"We may be outmatched here Joes but we have...excuse me Joes and Guardsman but we have to hold out hope that we can achieve victory or we might just lay down and die. Now I've got a few ideas which may just buy us some time..." Flint stopped himself in his speech when he noticed that his wife was raising her hand like a gradeschooler who knew the answer to an important test.  
  
"Yes Lady Jaye?" Flint had a bad feeling about this.  
  
"I don't mean to interrupt the testerone flow here about last battles but I think I may have a clue about how to deal with our unpleasant traitors to our newly westernized allies," Lady Jaye smiled to Daina even as Brekhov and his daughter frowned.  
  
"Speak up girl!" Quick Kick said even as the New Englander gave her plan, which of course was brillant but likely to get them all killed.  
  
***  
  
General Orlock Blitzer sat back in the tank as he sent his men forward on the all-out assault to eradicate the last remanent of the October Guard. It was a good feeling to be a General he had to admit and he personally wondered what it would be like to serve Cobra when they were in charge of the world. He knew they didn't hate Jews like the Nazis did and were probably more political extremists like Stalin than ethnic. Orlock didn't particularly like that because you never could know when a political extremist might take you out as a threat but there wasn't much that could be done about that problem he thought.  
  
"MINES!" one of his tank commanders shouted before his vehicle exploded in a hail of dirt.   
  
"Press on!" Orlock shouted as he fired his pistol in the air to signal the men to continue forward. It rather burned him that his lord Rustavich wished to expend so many lives in combat but Orlock knew that the army would always have more where that came from. Furthermore Orlock knew that causalties looked good on budget reports, with a thousand or more he might be able to swing the best equipment for their re-organization when Russia was finally under their control. He wondered if they would invade Chechenya or the Baltic States first. He personally hoped that they invaded the Baltics, he was tired of killing people in the East.  
  
The air filled with red laser blasts as random fire poured from the top of the hill. As expected the front lines absorbed the majority of the blasts from them even as the tanks got into position. The infantry in modern nights existed solely to remove mines and heavy assault weaponry from the tanks as near as Orlock could tell.   
  
"Open fire!" Orlock shouted even as the trees were leveled with a chilling barrage of flame that presumably had wiped out the entire laser armed soldiery in the woods.   
  
"Sir what do you want now?" Major Peter Germaine Ruthven called up, Peter was a minor nobleman's descent that had somehow escaped the purges and made his way up into the ranks of the Army. Orlock wondered if he as a General could have him shot for being a nobleman, he decided not to risk it but it was still a very appealing prospect to see the obnoxious man killed. Orlock had been promoted from a rank and file private thanks to extensive combat time, Peter was simply a fool with an education the Army throught was worthwhile thanks to his Chess abilities.  
  
"Go take a team up to the top of the Hill and remove any survivors. You have my fullest confidence," Orlock said as he sent the man off to what he hoped was his death. There was no fire comming anymore from the hill and Orlock suspected that the October Guard had met their final destruction in the initial barage. After the humiliating near defeat he had suffered at their base before sheer logistics had saved the day, this was almost dissapointing.  
  
Major Ruthven grumbled personally as he selected his hand picked squadron of soldiers from the group to investigate the October Guard. He personally intended to capture at least one alive and convince General Orlock that they were fitting prizes to be presented to the new Czar in Supreme Commander Rustavich. He would then arm the October Guardsman and allow him or her to kill the fat fool so tha he could personally execute them and claim command of the war machine in the region. If the Americans took out Cobra as he expected they eventually would, then he would probably go warlord and claim dominion over a region that wanted out of Putin's shattered territories.   
  
"Sir, it's empty!" his lieutenant called from the bunker as the Major ran up and discovered that indeed there was no sign of inhabitation by the October Guard as they expected.  
  
"It's a A-7 automatic program sir. The Americans invented it in 1985 modifying BATs and we adapted it in 1987. They must have been using a supply of the devices in here to create distracting fire," the Lieutenant explained as Ruthven nodded, not understanding a word of it but feeling he had to seem important.   
  
"They left us a note though! It's in English I think" One of the privates said as Ruthven walked over and pulled the taped picture and yanked it off the wall with all of his might.  
  
"What does it say Sir?" the private asked looking over Ruthven's shoulder even as suddenly all the explosives glowed with about a thousand interlocked timers.  
  
"It says...sucker." Ruthven smacked his face.  
  
***  
  
For the Russian troops which had been sent on the equivalent of a Soviet Snipe Hunt through the woods, the earthquake that they felt was not the harbringer of doom that it was to General Orlock and the entirety of his elite assault force. Instead the troops who had simply decided throwing their lot in with Cobra was the better alternative to their cities being vaporized from space (like everyone thought the Americans would eventually during the Cold War), it was simply another of the unpleasant natural phenemenon that proliferated through Russia.  
  
"So which of you think Orlock is a looney-bird?" Private Varich said as he scanned the air around him for signs of life.   
  
"He is completely mad but we can do nothing, we were assigned to his unit and none of us are heroes," Private Vila said with a shrug.  
  
"You know I read in the Cobra Princible on the internet. You know it's the book that was supposadly written by the New Cobra Commander as a sequel to the old one's Cobra Manifesto? It said that among traitors or malcontents, a person who is the most insane will be promoted to the highest position of power," Private Iryonochka said with a look towards his fellows.  
  
"That thing has got to be a fake. No Cobra would say such a thing," Private Varich said even as he heard a strange noise comming from the trees nearby.  
  
"You never know," Vila said pulling out his rifle and taking aim.  
  
It was instead that the squadron members encountered something that was entirely unexpected on their odd journey and that was the form of a breathtakingly beautiful Valkyrie. The girl who was obviously one of the lost October Guard looked like she'd stumbled through the woods onto the Russian squadron clearly by accident with a frightened look on her face.  
  
"Well it looks like today isn't quite as bad as we thought it would be," Private Varich smiled even as his jaw busted open from the fist that impacted it.  
  
The G.I. Joe and October Guard remnants decended on the twelve and in less than ten seconds, the entire sum of the Russian Squadron was on the ground unconcious.   
  
"That was the most sexist thing that I've ever had to do in my entire life," Firebird murmured as she spat on the Private who had been oogling her.  
  
"It worked didn't it?" Daina defended it as they drug the soldiers to the side to start changing into their uniforms.  
  
"I would have done it myself but I didn't want Flint to kill all these people," Lady Jaye shrugged even as she smiled at the success of her plan.  
  
"Like they'd bother with you," Firebird chose the smallest of the Russians to steal the uniform of.  
  
"Okay Goldilocks, let's you and me step to the side..." Lady Jaye pointed to a nearby grove of trees even as she started rolling up her sleeves for a fist fight. Flint took hold of his wife and was just barely able to contain her. Alison after all was hardly sensetive about her still stunning good looks but it was the proper thing to do to punish youngins who made comments like that.  
  
"Save your energy Jaye, we've got an entire country to rescue," Flint said to her with a half smile.  
  
***  
  
Falcon stared at the desert that was Nevada stretched before him. Personally, while he was here, he had considered taking a bit of time off from this mission to toss craps down in Vegas but he knew that was probably irresponsible of him. Area 51 was the chosen sight for the ambush of Cobra and it was not going to be pretty any which way about it. They were taking a page from WW2 and performing a rather elaborate magic act to give Cobra's damn cloaking device hidden devices a taste of their own medicine. The collected force of G.I. joe's new recruits, all the old veterans they could muster, and a significant sum of the best of every division of the Military were prepared for this attack. He wasn't sure how the Navy fit into all of this but the very fact Shipwreck was annoying him every five minutes with his prattle said they were here too.  
  
"...And that's the time that I saved G.I. Joe from Cobra by telling bed time stories," Shipwreck smiled as Falcon wondered if he'd be forgiven one battlefield execution.  
  
"Yeah Shipwreck, I'm really glad to know about all these fascinating incidents from the past but could you see about those all-terrain attack vehicles there. They're the newest thing we have for assaulting Cobra's new death machines and we need to know if they're working up to speed," Falcon prayed to god that the man accepted his offer before he had to kill him.  
  
"Okay there. Personally speaking we've been in alot worse situations with Cobra than this. Oh sure they may have never killed more people before but what about the time they took over all of the world's television sets? If they hadn't been stopped, then every single one of the young whippersnaps would be saluting Tinky-Winkie Commander like Reverend Falwell said they would," Shipwreck proceeded then to light a cigarette to go work on the Hover Skimmer Z-4's.  
  
"Just think of Jinx in a bikini....and add some other women," Falcon muttered even as he saw something in the distance and pulled out his macro-binoculars.  
  
The sight of the thing decloaking was enough to give Falcon enough pause to actually seriously weigh his options about making a run for it and taking up short order cooking. The Cobra Doom Transport was a space-born shuttle that contained an entire garrison of soldiery for quick deployment anywhere on Earth with enough of their new weaponry, crack troops, and Super BATs. Each garrison had enough firepower in it to subjugate a city the size of New York City within a week and they're were four of them making their 'surprise' attack on Area 51 to wipe out the relatively modest force of G.I. Joe.  
  
"Blubber and Barnacles that's alot of Snakes," Shipwreck said licking his lips and spitting out the sand that blew on him.  
  
General Hawk had seriously underestimated the amount of force that Cobra was able to muster in this assault, not to mention willing. Their ambush was supposed to be an overwhelming victory for the side of the United States with prisoners that could perhaps give some information to take out Jupiter's Thunder above. Instead they were outnumbered even if they had the option of surprise on their side and a three way attack plan. If Falcon chose to attack and Cobra managed to fight their way out of it then he might be not only allowing them to achieve their goal of wiping out G.I. Joe but giving them a massive propaganda victory which just might split the back of Hawk's support in the USA to the point of capitulation. Before the kidnapping of the President Falcon never would have guessed he might live through the last days of his country but now there was the question if the thousands of men at his back were all that was left of the United States military willing to fight to the end.  
  
"What the hell are you waiting for space case? The enemy is slithering into the hole! It's time to drop some damn nukes and blow its nest up!" Sergeant Slaughter who had somehow managed to pass the physical for re-admission into the military ranks shouted from the top of the latest G.I. Joe Desert Tank. A device so experimental and sophisticated they had spent all morning tinkering with it to function in the middle of the desert properly.  
  
Falcon sucked in some of the dusty air and swallowed it. If he retreated with this force they weren't going to get another shot at Cobra in a straight fight no matter how hard they tried. At the very least if they fought Cobra to the last man they would go down as men and not the very slime that these men likened themselves to be. Falcon knew he wasn't going to retreat or order one even if it was down to just him and the entire damn army of Lucifer out there. Pulling out a bull horn, Falcon addressed his troops  
  
"Okay we're going to hit em hard, we're going to hit them fast, and we're going to hit them long. Fire at anything that isn't wearing a United States uniform and keep firing even if your sure everything is dead. This will go down as a great victory for the country that we love because quite frankly there isn't any other option that's acceptable. Gentleman start your engines, cock your guns, and shout....YO JOE!"  
  
The shout that filled the air as Falcon jumped onboard the lead tank and lead the charge deafened the machine's roar as the Battle of Red Sands became immortalized in the history of 20th century warfare for the innovative tactics used by both sides and the sheer savagery with which it was fought til it was won. 


	12. Heroism before evil

Chapter 12  
  
Jonathan Sharp moved down the halls of Cobra Command Station with a grim, delibrat precision as he overviewed the situation in his mind. He had let his emotions get the better of him and for that lapse in judgement the people under his command had been endangered. Scarlet's location had somehow been blocked from the station's computer sensor grid which indicated the inconcievable notion that one of his followers had turned upon him. He would dispatch search teams across the headquarters of the world's most powerful force if...he could bloody find somebody! The entire place seemed almost deserted compared to its usual packed bluster. Sayru would find his answers on the bridge.  
  
"And for you Iceheart for extreme heroism in the face of G.I. Joe sabotage, ingenius use of such virtues as treachery and manipulation, along with the wonderful present to Cobra of the life of the team leader Beachhead; I present to you the Cobra Medal of Honor," the voice of Snakes, the original Cobra Commander was the first thing that Jonathan was surprised to hear. No longer slurred by the serpent's tongue that he had been cursed with for more than a decade, he was dressed in a military grade bio-suit, and presenting Cobra's highest award to the Black Asp operative Jonathan had picked for an infiltration mission. The bridge looked like it had been transformed into a child's birthday with balloons, streamers, and party hats.  
  
"Father..." Jonathan could hardly say anything else as he stared at the procession.  
  
"Ah my Son! So good of you to make it to this occasion! Iceheart has blessed us with our first G.I. prisoners of war. I'm considering setting them in individual hand to hand combat in the Testing Pit with some of our modified BATS. It will be over very quickly I think but the replay value should be immense at homes. I have furthermore the much more important news to give you that thanks to the efforts of the genius scientist Doctor Moreau that I have been restored to my old self again. Unfortunately the Doctor was callously murdered in an assaisination attempt on my life by Destro and we will have to order his immediate execution once the formal exchange of power from you to me has taken place," Cobra Commander said patting Jonathan on the back as he put a paper horn to his costume's breather and blew it out in a snake like stream.  
  
The ex-leader of Cobra looked at the Baroness who showed no reaction to the causal intention to murder her lover. It appeared that whether she thought it would suceed or not, that she wished to see him tested for some arguement they had. "Formal exchange of power father?" the terrorist leader said with a somewhat dry and ironic point.  
  
"Well yes, I don't mean to say that you won't be possessed of a place in the new scheme of things. You're an excellent military leader, the best I've ever had...which isn't saying much I know...but when it comes to the actual process of ruling the world; I think you and I can agree that it'll be best for you to leave that up to me. I dub thee Cobra General and place you in complete charge of Cobra Military Forces with the exclusion of any orders which will come down from me and direct transference of power from me to them," Cobra Commander then kissed his son on both cheeks. It might become necessary they both knew for the leader of Cobra to exterminate his military General at some point in order to defuse any power base problems but terminating other more proven opposition would occupy his time well before that occasion would come to pass.  
  
"Father, what have you done with our military force?" Jonathan had a very bad feeling about what the answer was going to be here.  
  
"Having already recieved news from our partisans in Russia that the October Guard is no more...by the way I think we should have their leaders killed in some messy accident before they get too popular...I have dispatched our force for a crushing blow against the identified G.I. Joe headquarters. I don't want this war entirely won with bolts of lightning from the gods, that is you and me, and I want maybe a trophy or two like General Hawk's head for state functions," Cobra Commander chuckled evilly as he thought of the resulting carnage. Cobra-la had been dying for centuries before the final destruction by the B.E.T's nuclear like detonation and the nobility had emerged from the military whose purpose was to kill as many citizens as possible to preserve their increasingly feeble resources. Snakes had no illusions that he had been bred for anything more than sadism, murder, and destruction and indeed felt that these qualities were in fact the heart of the human experience. Qualities necessary in a leader who wished to drive civilization and increasingly absent every year among the dead end evolutionary track that mankind ran on. Who knew what vistas the human race would reach guided by a leader who would live for thousands of years (or potentially even longer with a consistant focus on genetics) that was untroubled by any remorse to doing what was necessary to be victorious on all fronts?  
  
Cobra General clenched his fists as he realized the sheer volume of loss that this represented. Cobra despite his father's pretensions was not strong enough to causally throw away lives in conflict with G.I. Joe or the Guard. As much as he loved his ideals of honorable combat, such chosen duels to the destruction of the opponent had to be chosen carefully since they recquired the knowledge your opponent would be easily destroyed or treachery by them might not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Jonathan suspected that the General of the Armies in Hawk was just idealistic enough to cast aside respect for his opponent to lay a trap that his father would easily fall for. 'Rather like me being just dishonorable enough to annhilate men from orbit with no chance of defending themselves against it,'  
  
"I've also dispatched the Dreadnoks. Those pathetic mercanaries were an impediment to our image as purveyors of culture. Their deaths will serve as a fitting warning to the scum that we'll have to eliminate to help solidify our hold on the planet and legitimize our reign," Cobra Commander continued. His father was a genius there was no denying it but he was often far too free with his plans.  
  
"They still had their use father. I think you were rash," Jonathan said in what was the most disrespectful tone that he ever took with the man who had made him what he was. He had a peculiar fondness for the men and women who had lived their own rugged way, they were more honest about the reasons they fought than perhaps even he was. The loss of Zarana in particular pained him as she too was a person who struggled with the morality of the evil society that had raised them both but, like he, had never been able to escape it.  
  
"Nonsense," Cobra Commander said, causally dismissing his son's concerns.  
  
"Shareware would you kindly do a diagnostic of the ship? I want you to look for the possibilities of sabotage," Cobra General said as he looked at the cyborg. He remembered well why he had come up here and the incredible danger even one free G.I. Joe woman could cause. Danger doubled by the revelation that there was pratically no one here to stop her.  
  
"Yes General," Shareware said after getting an okay cue from Coba Commander. The results of the diagnostic were not particularly encouraging and he re-did it three times before sharing the news that was about the worst thing since discovering he wasn't allowed to download porn during his working hours. Not that it had stopped Shareware.  
  
"What is it?" Jonathan asked.  
  
"Well it seems that the Reactor Core has reached just about three Roman letters before Omega and a brief track of the electronic paper trail says that this is because someone activated the self-destruct system about half an hour ago," Shareware said before starting to whistle the theme from the Goonies for reasons that are unfathomable to anyone but Super computer brained geeks.  
  
"WHAT!?" Cobra Commander shouted in horror.  
  
"Eject the Reactor Core immediately. Prepare the ships for evacuation immediately to the projected safe locations," Cobra General said as he acknowledged his mistake may have been greater than originally thought.  
  
"Belay that order! We can't allow our greatest weapon to fall into the hands of the enemy! Shut down the self destruct!" Cobra Commander said as he gestured for the Crimson Guard to arrest Jonathan.  
  
"We can't do that father. Shareware has indicated that it's passed the point of no return. Without the main reactor Jupiter's Thunder is crippled and our cloaking field cannot be maintained. Staying onboard would simply mean the intense likelihood of our being arrested and the humiliating resulting charade of a trial before execution. Europe is unlikely to complain much about the Death Penalty being outlawed with the causalties having reached above anything since World War 2," Jonathan causally explained the situation to his father. As long as he was allowed to make the final decision then it would fine, unless he decided to do alittle house cleaning in Cobra's command structure with this new oppurtunity.  
  
"Mmmm yes that must be avoided strongly. I would hate for you my son to be forced to take the honorable way out to preserve your honor while I dignifiedly take the stand to the end," Cobra Commander thought that in such a situation he'd definately have to make preperations for a rescue squad during his trial.   
  
"Yes father," Jonathan sighed.  
  
"Very well eject the Reactor Core! Dump it over someplace that will hurt our enemies like New York or Moscow. You Jonathan shall meanwhile hunt down and destroy these saboteurs while I boldly lead our retreat and prepare for a counter attack with our new partisans!" Cobra Commander lifted his weapon on high to rally the troops.  
  
"We can't dump the reactor core over New York father or Moscow," Jonathan quite deliberately lied, he had no wish to inflict a few million innocent causalties just for spite at this time.   
  
"However sir we CAN use the thrusters of the super weapon to plunge the thing into the atmosphere and create the equivalent of thirty nuclear warheads. We can use this as the coup de gras to the rest of the planet to surrender to us," Shareware interrupted as he gave a wink and a thumbs up to his boss. Shareware didn't intend to leave his old boss behind but really wanted to ingratiate himself with the new management.  
  
Jonathan intended to kill him for it.  
  
"Excellent! With that kind of power we can simply shatter the United States where it stands and pick up the pieces of the rest of the world. I know the Americans anyway, they'll never submit to our authority willingly. COBRA!" Cobra Commander shouted as he ushered off everyone in a variety of directions while he waited for his shuttle to be the first one prepped to leave.  
  
Doing some brief calculations in his head, Cobra General realized with shock that the shattering of the United States with such a weapon could concievably in fact bring about Cobra's victory over the rest of the planet, abeit an unlikely one. He searched himself for some trace of outrage and horror that would result in the tens of millions of deaths that would give him the strength to break ranks with his father's dream. Sayru did not find it and knew his only hope was that the world would surrender before his father wiped out the super power. The military leader had not a trace of hope that his father would spare the pitiful ranks of mortality from the worst man made holocost ever visited on man.  
  
"Iceheart, guardsmen, come!"  
  
***  
  
General Abdullah Mayhem was the leader of Cobra Command's infantry forces and answerable only to the Cobra Commander himself, since he wasn't aware that a new rank had been created inbetween him and he. A Sudanese warrior who had become acquainted with the terrorist organization while trying to protect his families from the merciless corporation controlled government, he had developed a taste for battle with the First World and would have followed the leader of Cobra to the end of his life. Unfortunately the new leader seemed to have gaurenteed that he was going to do exactly that.  
  
"Order more troops to form a perimter around us and cover fire!" Major Bludd shouted beside him, the Austalian man's cowardice disgusting Abdullah. Ten years in the prisons of the Americans had eroded his stomach for battle and it was an insult to his supreme skill as a warrior that he should have to share command with the man.  
  
"We cannot spare the men if we are to emerge victorious!" General Mayhem screamed a war cry as he fired his pistol and felled the driver of a machine gun equipped jeep that flipped over and killed it's entire crew in an instant. The Cobra troops were loyal, couragous, and fanatical in the service of the Dark Cause that would bring an end to the self-styled age of Light that the West made their rallying cry on the backs of all other nations. Still the causalties were enough to shake the will of even the strongest military man, he believed there had to be at least ten thousand dead on both sides and the fighting wasn't even half over.  
  
"Victory is nothing if we're not there to enjoy it!" Major Bludd screamed even as he lifted up a bazooka into the air and exploded its rocket full blank into the propellers of a hovering helicopter. The poor beast spun around until it landed in a group of mixed soldiery that had been forced into a gunfight the likes not seen since WW1. Bludd hardly noticed the resulting explosion and the dying men's screams in the chaos that filled every corner of the air with laser bolts.  
  
"Flank their tank division, do not retreat under any circumstances and use your infantry to draw their fire. Their anti-tank rockets will give them pause until the Super BATs can make a full all out assault!" General Mayhem shouted into his walkie-talkie. It was his gift to be able to visualize a battle no matter how insanely fierce in it's entirety and draw forth probable solutions to the attack and defense difficulties each division under his command faced. He had to respect the genius of the American in charge who was dealing with his tactics quite handily. That coupled with the fact that the Americans will had not broken under the mind numbing causalties and fear his troops usually instilled was a testament to how difficult winning this battle would be. Mayhem was confident he would would not lose despite all the factors against him though. He had lost only one battle his entire life and that was to the man whose allegiance he had sworn himself and his resistance group to.  
  
"We have to leave now! They're breaking through our ranks! Order a retreat!" Major Sebastian Bludd shouted at his fool of a companion. The Austalian had not truly not lost his stomach for battle, far from it, but his way of doing battle was one alien to Mayhem. Sebastian only fought against enemies that he had a clear advantage over and enjoyed the sadistic advantage of fear and pretended mercy to annihilate his enemies. That Abdullah would stand and fight toe-to-toe with the United States military only showed him to be a fool that the original Cobra Commander would have strung up at the first oppurtunity. The other reason the mercanary leader holding the title of '  
'General of the Black Asp Special Missions units' thought less of Abdullah had less to do with anything that was the man's fighting or command style than the fact of his color. Major Bludd's grandfather had been a member of Hitler's SS who had escaped the crackdowns in Eastern Europe to the land of British crimminals and the mercanary refused to take orders from one who did not fit the ideals that had been instilled in the young man.  
  
"Never!" Abdullah shouted even as Blood causally shot his fellow soldier in the chest at point blank range and then emptied the clip of his revolver to make sure he wasn't about to rise.  
  
Leaning up against the back of a jeep, Sebastian thought about his options in this situation. It occured to him that he had managed to talk himself out of a pair of trials (and execution) in Rhodesia and Libya thanks to his willingness to pass along key bits of information about Cobra to his oh so accepting governments. With the dossier on Cobra he had been given to start his new career as a commander in their forces he might find himself extremely valuable to the United States as a prisoner. Bludd immediately shook away that option, the Americans were only generous to prisoners when they weren't feeling vengeful. Instead the Major decided to order the prisoners to fight to the last man as he made his own personal escape. Las Vegas after all wasn't so very far from here and if Cobra survived the comming days then he could always make contact with it later as the daring and heroic survivor of their bloodiest conflict yet. The Cobra Commander would believe anything provided it was laced with enough flattery, he was glad Snakes was back in charge.  
Bludd smiled even as Falcon picked him off with a sniper shot from 100 yards.  
Falcon crawled through the slim passages through the burning wreckage of all the war-machines the two sides had thrown at each other during this conflict. He had already lost two fingers in this battle and a blast wound that needed treatment in the side, and probably a new kidney while they were at it. The team he'd been riding with was all dead now and so were more good soldiers than he had ever wanted to see dead, especially under his command. Falcon knew the snake's head was the key and had crawled from the wreckage with a walkie-talkie for carrying out his orders in the middle of this hellhole and a rifle for taking out their leadership.  
With each of the Cobra Generals dead then there was no chance for anymore funny business from them, they were going to win this one but it was going to be the blackest day in American warfare since Gettysburg.  
"Man I am so going to Vegas when this over," Falcon spat a bit as he ordered the troops to advance to the point and tighten their circle around Cobra on the west.  
***  
  
Supreme Commander Rustavich yawned as finished off a bottle of fine imported champagne and watched American Soap Opera on a big screen that he had connected to a satelite dish. He had only been ruler of Russia alittle while and he was already growing bored with everything he could causally order up. He thought about ordering some more public executions to watch on TV but he really didn't know any of the people this time so he suspected that they wouldn't be nearly as fun as the last batch of his superiors. Putting on his silk komono, he got up passed Anya and Stacy to go check on his armies and see if they had won his war yet.  
"Good evening Supreme Commander," the unfamiliar major answered on the holographic receiever he'd ordered taken out of Parliament to put in his bedrooom.  
"Who the hell are you?" Rustavich said as he yawned a bit and fixed himself a glass of vodka.  
"Unfortunately General Orlock was killed in the fighting sir. We've managed to get a few of the October Guard heavily drugged. We've heard that anyone who can bring the Cobra Commander prisoners from either the Russian top team or the American will be gifted with great wealth and power in the new order," The man said with the worst Russian accent Vladimir had ever heard, he must be a Cossack.  
"I already have a lot of power and wealth soldier and I should order you right now to dump them over the side of your helicopter into the nearest frozen river," Vladimir drank down his scotch in one gulp before he stopped a moment.   
The man looked nervous and embarrased about this, probably expecting some sort of reward himself for all this.  
"Hold on is Colonel Brekhov's girl among them?" Vladimir stopped a moment to think on this.  
"His ex-wife or his daughter sir?" the man asked with a slightly anxious look.  
"Both," The Supreme Commander said with a happy look. He'd hated Brekhov more than any other man in his life, the pompous ass. It would be nice to see if he could do anything thoroughly unpleasant to them.  
"We have them Sir and the Colonel himself," Flint said as he tried to continue using his Boris Badinov accent to Lady Jaye's considerable acting-review horror beside him. Only Horrorshow seemed remotely unoffended by the speach style.  
"Okay I'll come see you. Ummmm yeah...go contact the bank and say that you want a million dollars American. Say I ordered you give it up. Divide it among yourselves and have a blast as they say," The Supreme Commander said as he went into his closet and pulled out the elaborate black uniform with the Cobra symbols and ranks he'd devised and put it on. Thirty minutes later he was in his office with the bound and gagged figures of the October Guard, with guns trained on them by the fine forces of the Russian military.  
"Ahhhh yes, I will take the pair for interrogation n...." Vladimir didn't get to finish 'now' before Brekhov left up and smacked him in the face with his newly free hands and the man was unconcious before the rest of the Guard began the worst of the pummeling.  
"Should we help him? We are the good guys," Lady Jaye said as she watches Brekhov slam the man finally on his desk, finishing his portion of the revenge for all the good soldiers killed.  
"For a guy who didn't notice that this is the most diverse squadron in the Russian Military? No way," Quick Kick smirked as he immitated Flint's awful Russian accent.  
"Now what do we do with the piece of trash?" Firebird said as she spat on Vladimir's still form.  
"We deliver him to the Loyalist forces and let the Cobra allied military in Russia destroy itself in petty warlord fighting. You on the other hand are going to be making your way to your pickup point and get out of this place and back to your people," Brekhov shook his head and slapped a pair of handcuffs on the Supreme Commander. They would simply leave as one more Russian military group transporting a prisoner. Because Red Star liked irony, he thought he would say they were transporting him to prison.  
"Why not meet with the leader of the Loyalists?" Flint asked as he considered contacting Frostbite's team who were sabotaging Cobra partisan supply lines in hopes of drawing forces who might know where Cobra's headquarters might be located before they rained more fireballs down on the planet.  
"I won't lie to you Colonel Flint. Cobra is winning this war and while the traitors are many, it won't be long until Russia bends its knee like it did with the Khanate. I will keep fighting and work to set up a resistance to eventually overthrow the darkness but while I can gaurentee my safety. I think the leader of the Loyalists would be willing to keep you and any other G.I. Joe he finds as bargaining chips for Russian autonomy," Brekhov shook his head, he never was ceased to be amazed by the lack of spirit that polluted his land's military ranks.  
Flint gave a reluctant nod.   
***  
  
Snake Eyes had set the self-destruct system to go off in one hour to prevent anyone further dying from Jupiter's thunder, he wondered if that would be time to find Scarlet. What he found instead in the darkest level of the monolithic fortress was something that was enough to shake the mind of even the devoted Ninja warrior's concentration on his mission.   
'My God,' was all Snake Eyes could say at the sight of the football stadium like rows of torture racks. Strapped to the metal plates with their eyes fed laser beams by mechanical arms and looks of horror and fear frozen on their faces were the world's leaders. Hundreds of them were hooked up to life support equipment that meant they had likely been like this for days and days. The computer equipment next to the scientists that Snake Eyes had unsheathed the mortal coil of displayed a frightening series of brainwashing images that were slowly rebuilding their minds from the ground up.  
Snake Eyes wondered whether or not to leave the mortal leaders here or not because the people that would return to the Earth might just as well be fanatical servants of Cobra more than anything else, he had no idea how deeply these people were being altered and how much damage had already been done. Conscience eventually won out and Snake Eyes sat down to start waking up each individual.   
"It has been a long time brother since we have seen each other," Storm Shadow said behind Snake Eyes as the warrior announced his presence to his fellow Ninja. Snake Eyes would have cussed if he could speak, the entire situation had practically proven his skills had slipped considerably in detecting oncomming opponents and that was one of the most important skills one could possibly have.  
"It did not have to be. The G.I. Joe team had offered you immunity for information to us because your crimes were relatively minor compared to the rest of Cobra's High Command but you turned it down to serve a sentence handed down by the United Nations for a decade," Snake Eyes signed to his brother ninja. Storm Shadow had refused to turn over any information about Cobra and had even escaped from prison only to be recaptured for trying to rescue fellow soldiers for the cause that Snake Eyes knew he didn't believe in.  
"I took an oath of service to a fellow Cobra who saved my life in battle. It transformed from a mere job to true loyalty Snake Eyes. The new Commander of Cobra is an honorable man, not like his father. When I kill him and the true leadership of Cobra is restored then the world will know a golden age where man is allowed to be a warrior and not be ashamed of it," Storm Shadow said with a terrible bitterness. Japan had transformed into an economic power before Storm Shadow's eyes but each day the spirituality and heritage that was meaningful to Storm Shadow died alittle bit more.  
"Not like this," Snake Eyes gestured to the suspended politicans as he removed his katana and held it before him.  
"In war honor is only extended to those who have honor. Which of these fools is anything but a courtier?" Stormshadow did not even wait for Snake Eyes reply as he drew his own sword and lept downward even as Snake Eyes lept up in the air. Their swords clashed and clanged a dozen times before they spun in the air and landed on their feet to continue their charge again at one another.  
"Scarlet is onboard this ship and I will not suffer a delay in bringing her back. Do not make me kill you," Snake Eyes signed one last time even as he drew forth a second blade.  
"She belongs to another now brother!" Storm Shadow backflipped forward even as he threw shurikens into the air that Snakes Eyes flipped over. The silent ninja spin kicking at Stormshadow.  
Storm Shadow easily somersaulted over the leg and pulled out his own blades to parry Snake Eyes's own before he realized that he felt somewhat weak.  
"Poison...." Storm Shadow looked down to his chest which had been pierced by a small needle sticking out of the knee Snake Eyes had landed a light tap on.  
Snake Eyes did not sign his apologies for killing him in a dishonorable manner but granted him what comfort that he could. The poison had no cure and with a doomed life Storm Shadow cast aside one of his katana blades and slammed the other through his chest. Storm Shadow knowing what the ninja wished then decapitated him with a single stroke.   
Snake Eyes then finished up his computer work for the rescue.  
-Charlemagne 


	13. The Doom or the Salvation of the United ...

Chapter 13  
  
Cobra Command Station was truly a marvel of engineering and were it not for the ability of Cobra General (then Commander) to instill fanatical political ideals in the minds of even the most brillant scientist then it might not have happened. Credit also went to the internet and the open publication of scientiffic secrets in the era of free information. The device cut across every single functioning frequency on the planet as it decloaked from space and begin it's death descent towards the United States of America's capital.  
General Hawk who was only able to stand tall, proud, and regal despite the limits of human endurance he was testing by the knowledge his leadership was needed watched the appearence of the most foul creature he had ever known come onto the screen. Cobra Commander aka Snakes was once again dressed in the blue mask that hid all but his vile eyes. His uniform was covered in dozens of medals for more military action and valor than any man could earn in a lifetime, even if Cobra medals were worth the tin they were minted from. Clayton Albernathy only hoped that the people of the world were still intelligent enough to know that it was the man who made the rank not the rank itself, image could win nations.  
"People of Planet Earth, I have returned. Two decades ago I waged a fierce war upon the corrupt and purile institutions that I saw had infested the planet like the rats that carried the Black Death. Today I declare this long running struggle at an end in my complete victory!" Cobra Commander could hardly keep himself from bursting out into maniacal laughter of triumph. General Hawk who only thrown up once in his life after a particularly wild victory celebration actually felt nauseous from the near-truth of his words.  
"You slimy piece of...." Duke slammed his fist into his hands as he felt his face, he'd just got off from a three hour call with his wife and children who were in the process of evacuating to the United States's safe areas.  
"Your military infrastructures are in ruins! Your leadership has been felled! Even your precacious October Guard, G.I. Joe, and Action Force is exterminated! Half the world has already seen the benefits of surrender to our most illustrious reign and it is now time for the rest of the planet to see simalarily so. Since the precision strikes of Jupiter's thunder have not been enough to convince you of the absolute futility of resistance in the face of Cobra domination...it is time to show you truly what the Cobra man is capable of!" Cobra Commander clenched his fist in front of the camera and a chill ran up the spine of every man in military command.  
"I can't imagine what they've got now to throw at us," Duke said as he tried to get his mind off Scarlet. He loved his wife and family but he had never thought that he wouldn't be able to go to her and be with her anymore, he expected she'd outlive him. He hoped there was a cold dark pit in hell for Cobra Commander and his second in command for what they'd done to her. His other friends and his very nation were like wounds whose pain was drowned out by the magnitude of that one.  
"Despite being a scientist and doctor of many diverse fields, as well as a scholar and professor....I will not bore you with the minor details of what is about to occur to the planet. Suffice to say..." Cobra Commander turned and pointed to a large map of the United States with extendable pointer as he gestured to the original states of the Union. "That this entire region will be rendered uninhabitable by the dropping of Jupiter's Thunder ontop of the city of Washington D.C. as its highly volatile power core is set to detonate at that exact moment thus releasing an explosion of immeasurable power that will cause the oceans to burn in flames, the air to become an accelerant, along with triggering a variety of natural disasters that will be felt all over the world. Furthermore the radiation cloud that will be spread by this quite deliberate operation will kill any beings unfortunate to be in it's path by slow incurable poisoning of the cells,"  
"Jesus Christ, no minor details my..." Mainframe was the only man who could sputter anything out at the demonic plan.  
"You could attempt to destroy the station before it lands but our defenses are quite capable of shooting down anything that you might throw at us which would mean merely merely dumping more radiation over your precacious civilization, though given the results I suppose you have nothing to lose by it. This action by the way is non-negiotiable and is a punishment for the hubris that the Americas have always displayed towards Cobra power. With this demonstration I hope sincerely that all resistance will end. We will sacrafice any number of lives to achieve our victoy and we have no thought to our own. Cobra Commander out," Cobra Commander said as the signal turned off.  
"General is their any chance of evacuating..." Duke began before General Hawk cut him off.  
"None whatsoever," Clayton Albernathy sat down in his chair and put his hands to his head. There was simply too much to deal with and not enough firepower, men, or honor left among those under his command to deal with the mammoth threat that broken the will of the planet. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge the truth but now he couldn't help it, Cobra was on the verge of winning and America was going to die for the world's weakness before evil.  
Duke placed his hand on Hawk's shoulder and embraced his stepfather. He wasn't going to give the man he admired most on the Earth platitudes about how they were going to win this battle because they were right, even though Conrad Hauser believed that in his heart that somehow the Snakes would be defeated. "We won't give up hope General. Even if Cobra does destroy everything we've known, we will die on our feet rather than on our knees. Perhaps that will give men an example to live by and eventually win the war we couldn't,"  
General Hawk nodded his head and rose up one last time for command as he took Duke by the hand and shook it firmly "Thank you, I needed that General," he said with proud look in his face.  
***  
  
Falcon listened to the radio broadcast as he took a moment to look at the remains of the battle-field. For every ten soldiers that the younger Albernathy had led into battle, one man had lived to the end of the battle and he wasn't sure how many of them would pull through given many had suffered severe wounds. Cobra's army had fought to the last man and not a single man or woman had surrendered, forcing the United States military to utterly annihiliate them. Now the announcement by Cobra Commander meant that this was the most pointless victory that the USA had won since Andrew Jackson had won the battle of New Orleans.  
"Well isn't this a hurricane in the Bermuda Triangle in a leaky wooden sailboat," Ship wreck said as he smoked a cigarette and leaned back on the boat that he had driven into the battle, cool as a cucumber. Falcon who would probably never play the piano again, not that he had since he was six, wondered just how many screws were loose in Delgado that made him able to deal with stress like this. Probably the mission where Cobra had royally messed with his head using synthoids.  
"You have a way with words Ship wreck," Falcon said even as he looked at the Sergeant's body and wished he had a good stiff drink. The old soldier had fought tooth and nail and gone down with about twenty Cobra soldiers trying to take him with him. If Falcon had thought about counting the laser burns on his body he'd probably come up with about ten. Slaughter had been the man who'd taught Falcon a great deal about respecting what being a G.I. Joe meant. He had been a good soldier, a great one to wear the green beret but without Slaughter he never would have known whether or not he was a member of the best team in the world on his own merits.  
"Well my glib tongue ain't going to do much to save the United States I can tell you that," Ship wreck muttered even as he petted his parrot who was probably the only one who had gotten through the battle without a scratch.  
"Yeah," Falcon said, not really having anything else to say. His father and brother were in Washington D.C. which meant at any moment he might lose them forever. There was worse running through his mind including the little kids of Scarlet, Flint, and Lady Jaye up in New England and what his kids would do living under a flag that bore the Cobra hood. He smacked his head and slammed himself against the side of the boat Ship wreck was next too, too much introspection destroyed the brain.  
"What you need sailor is a good stiff drink and a woman that's what I've got to say," Ship Wreck slapped Falcon over the shoulder and gave him a big grin.  
"All the good places are likely to be evacuated Ship wreck....oh yeah and I'm married," Falcon added as an after thought as he stole one of Delgado's cigarettes.  
"Oh yeah, Snake Eyes would kill you if you did anything behind Jinx's back too," Ship wreck chuckled, a bit of gallows humor for an awful occasion.  
"No, SHE'D kill me. Snake Eyes would just mutiliate the body," Falcon sighed and bit into the wrapping on his hand.  
"Well there's alot of men out there Vincent who need someone to talk to them. They need to know that Cobra about to blow up the planet or not that what they've done here matters. It's a damn small group of people who ever expected to see fighting on U.S. soil, let alone fighting like this. We may not be able to do anything about old Raghead's flying bomb in the air but it didn't seem like we could much about them taking over television either. It all worked out in the end and the fact is that after today they're are a helluv lot snakes left in the world. Were we in Ireland and this Saint Patrick's day then I'd say it was prophetic," Ship Wreck gave the most meaningful speach of his life that moment, which was kind of sad.  
"I'll tell them that Ship wreck. Thanks," Falcon said looking at the men and knowing just how much was required of following in the footsteps of his family's heritage.  
"No problem Colonel. Just make sure my combat pay is especially generous," the sailor said, adjusting his cap.  
***  
  
Destro watched causally as Scarlet disabled the guards in the prison control center and then promptly tied them up. It was profoundly messy business and the Scottish arms dealer was very glad that he had given up leading the Iron Grenadiers, it was just no longer his idea of a good time. He was furthermore glad that Cobra Commander had the i.q. somewhere between seven and nine for leading the majority of Cobra's military structure down below to the Earth, it made their job immensley easier.   
"You heard the announcement of Cobra Commander, we need to get a move on," Scarlet said as she searched the nearby computer for word on where the G.I. Team that had been captured earlier was being held. If they were going to do something to save the world's leaders and the United States they were going to need help doing it.  
"I am aware of the magnitude of our current predicament Miss O'Hara. I furthermore am anxious to advert this disaster myself. With the sheer volume of life at stake it is quite possible that not only shall I emerge from this with my freedom but perhaps even the mantle of hero," Destro chuckled to himself at the ironic image of himself shaking hands with the President of the United States and perhaps going 'legitamate'.   
"My God that is all you think about isn't it, what's in it for you?" Scarlet said even as she got the code for the team's location. Cobra Command Station had a hell of a lot of cells for being little more than a giant laser attached to a generator.   
"When I was only a boy Scarlet, I was made aware of my father's business in a most rude way. My grandfather had to explain that the British government had ordered his murder. He had supplied weapons to the Nazi regime out of desire to see Scotland freed of the British yolk and the Soviets destroyed for some vague connection to the Russian monarchy. When the full depths of his allies depravity had become known to my father, he turned over all the information he had on them and our manufacturing plants operating under Hitler's supervision abroad. It was insturmental in winning the war for the side of the Allies. However the business was still a potential threat and many hated him for all he'd done. I knew on that day that the only thing I would have done differently in that situation was not have allowed my conscience to interfere with business," Destro said upfront as he clenched his gauntlets tightly and thought about the revenge he had wanted to inflict upon the rest of the planet that had never been fufilled. All his efforts had merely left his family holdings bankrupt and the hole in his stomach from his father's death as bitter as ever.  
"I'm sorry I asked," Scarlet muttered as they began their walk down the anti-septic stainless steel corridors of the dungeon level.  
"Please do not mock my pain," Destro said with a slight growl to his voice.  
"I'm sorry Destro that your father was killed. I really am. However I'm not going to pretend that somehow gives you the license to engage in human experimentation, appeasing evil subterrainian entities, selling weapons to every man on the planet, and advising the most evil man in the world to get into the position he currently is in. Everyone in Cobra has a sob story that somehow makes them more pitable than someone to hate and I know more than anyone what it's like to want think it makes everything better but it doesn't," Scarlet shook her head with a sigh and finally reached the site of the G.I. Joe team. They looked like they were playing cards.  
"What the hell took you guys so long?" Demolition Derby looked up with a devlish grin.  
"Shut up. we've got a station to destroy," Scarlet smiled and opened the door as she turned to Destro. Surprisingly the Scottish royal had taken the time to dissapear. 


	14. The countdown to oblivion

Chapter 14  
  
Scarlet could not help but marvel at the engineering that was Cobra Command Station. It was too bad that it was going to wipe out half the United States and she tried to remain calm and professional about this possibility. It was practically impossible though and her hands nearly shook with the possibility and the sheer magnitude of evil that Cobra displayed every time that they returned. Wrapping oneself around that thought was the fact that while Snake Eyes, Gung Ho, and Dialtone had died because of this place she had been spending it with her ex-lover....a title all too recent. It was shame enough that one could burn one's very face the color of a bright red tomato.  
  
"So what exactly are we looking for here Red?" Demolition Derby asked as the man looked more than a little trigger happy himself. Scarlet wanted to slap him abit about and tell him to get his mind off Icicle but she couldn't do that with what she'd done, could she? Scarlet hadn't been close to Beach Head. The man had been an arrogant, obnoxious, and occasionally sexist jerk but he'd been a fellow G.I. Joe who should have been able to depend on those under his command. Instead he was one more man to be added to the Killed in the Line of Duty roster that until this war had been miraculously low in G.I. Joe names.  
  
"We have to locate either the control bridge for this ship or the power center and sabotage it so it'll burn up the station harmlessly in orbit rather than kill a hundred million people. Now if that doesn't sound hard enough then we have to check to see if they're holding any of the world leaders here as well and figure out a way to rescue them before Cobra's entire military gets back from their mission," Scarlet was at least able to kill her curiosity for whatever required the entire forces of the terrorist organization, she really didn't want to know.  
  
"Let's hope the guys on the ground manage to take care of that little eventuality," Last Chance said as she looked at Punch Card who was rapidly typing away at the computer terminal he'd transformed in five minutes into a laptop computer.  
  
"If I'm not mistaken then the main shuttle bay should be directly beyond these doors," Punch Card muttered while typing merily away at the machine.  
  
Scarlet looked at the doors that dominated their steps. The station wasn't content to be mere metal but had a life all it's own that reminded Miss O'Hara of the cathedrals she had visited on some of her sight-seeing of the rest of the world. The doors themselves were carved with elaborate golden images of Set's betrayal of his brother Osiris into the Nile. A few hallways back had been the story of the Midgard Serpent fighting the god Thor. Scarlet thought Jupiter's Thunder was a great deal like Jonathan, it was bizzare mixture of the beautiful and the repulsive. The old and the new meeting in such a way that she questioned how anyone got any work done on this place.  
  
"Do you know how to fly a Space Shuttle Demolition Derby I hope I am not too late in asking?" Scarlet asked. If they managed to blow this station, that was all well and good but she still wanted to get off this place. As close as she'd been with him recently, she didn't want to burn with the man she loved's funeral pyre. Her face flushed further at that particular complication to this mission that was about as welcome as terminal cancer.  
  
"Would it help you to know that I washed out of the program but I think I can fake it?" Demolition Derby smiled as he waved his hand a bit in front of his face.  
  
"No, not really," Scarlet shook her head even as the huge doors parted before her and the team drew its weapons on whatever might lie on the other side.  
  
The sight was an unexpected one with the hundreds of diplomats, dignitaries, and leaders of planet Earth loading onboard a Cobra shuttle while being overseen by someone that Scarlet had never expected to see again. It was a tender reunion between the ninja and the red haired martial artist that was one of the sweetest of their lives.  
  
"I've been looking everywhere for you Scarlet," Snake Eyes signed to her as Shana burst out laughing.  
  
"Guys I don't mean to bore you but from what I can tell just by our walking with the silent guy with the sword we need to mosey on down back to planet Earth. My country needs me," The President of the United States said peering out from the side of the plane and Scarlet smiled at him, glad to see he was all right. Admittadly, he looked like hell but that was to be expected under his present situation.  
  
"You're right Mr. President it does. Demolition Derby, get on board and get these people down to their homes," Scarlet said with a wave of her hand.  
  
"I'm not leaving until Icicle gets what is coming to her," Demolition Derby cocked his confiscated Cobra rifle. The intense look in his eye betrayed a need for revenge and the magnitude of the pain that Scarlet herself had to deal with just a few days ago. It was going to get alot of people killed and she couldn't allow that as long as she was in charge.  
  
"This isn't a place for personal vendettas DD. Millions of lives depend on what decisions we make here both personal and private. Right now our responsibility is to make sure that those people that we can save are. I order you, Punch Card, and Last Chance to get onboard that ship and take these people to to safety," Scarlet swallowed the lump in her throat as it registered just what she was going to be ordering herself. If she sent them on down while she stayed to destroy the station, that meant...she wasn't going home.  
  
Snake Eyes put his hand on Scarlet's shoulder as she put her hand on his.   
  
"I didn't think you weren't comming old friend," Scarlet smiled weakly as the thought loomed, together they just had a shot.  
  
"I understand Major. Yo Joe," Demolition Derby stared down and gave a salute. The final cheer a short and weak one before he made a brisk run towards the cockpit of the Shuttle.  
  
"Okay onto the next part of our plan....stopping the destruction of the Atlantic. How long do we have Snake Eyes?" Scarlet looked up dimly as if the ninja could know such a thing  
  
"Thirteen minutes," Snake Eyes signed.  
  
***  
  
Destro moved through eight sets of doors that talked about the story of Quezeticoatl on his way to the Baroness's quarters. He'd barely managed to dodge the buffoons led by the old formerly new Cobra Commander, power changed hands so quickly, and make it to this latest display in archanic decor. Destro was swiftly developing the theory that the reason of Cobra's success was also the reason that it could never achieve complete victory. Cobra's philosophy and imagery harkened back to different times that men remembered fondly or with a kind of horrofied awe. James McCullen Destro the XXIV had always prided himself in his family's traditions and more every moment it was comming to pass that it was a cage keeping him locked in a tragedy of Greek proportions.   
  
"You may have chosen a very poor time to come into my bed chambers again Destro," the soft, cool, and seductive voice of the only woman that Destro could ever feel anything for echoed in the back of his ears like a symphony. The Baroness was dressed quite provacatively for a woman onboard a lit bomb and in her hands was a automatic Asp-7 which would be able to explode a large portion of his chest even on a glancing hit if using the right ammunition. Rather unnecessary for a woman who only failed to win the world championship for pistolry because of terrorist activities suspicions. It was an affect that Destro found distinctly arousing.  
  
"I was under the impression that there was no better time to visit your bedchambers than when imminent death loomed," Destro said sardonically as he turned around.  
  
"Unfortunately the Cobra Commander, the King has returned to claim his throne, has ordered your death Destro. It seems unlikely that this time you will be able to make one of your infamous escapes and worm your way back to his good graces," The Baroness smiled as she chuckled. James questioned occasionally just how mad the woman he loved was. All too often with his new found clarity the MARS chairman could see her poisonous venom turning himself and the Commander upon one another even as she always enjoyed the favor of the leader. It was enough to make him want to strangle her for the infidelity then and there.  
  
"While escape is indeed my plan if I were to worm my way back into his good graces I would ask you to shoot me immediately upon so. What sort of world awaits us should we continue to follow the Commander?" Destro said as he waved his metal gauntlets in front of her and clenched his fists as tightly as possible. He had been seduced he was sure now into agreeing to even half the plans that Cobra Commander had done before, the only reason he could imagine why he hadn't pulled out a gun and fought with G.I. Joe when Cobra-la was going to destroy the planet.  
  
The Baroness made sure her aim was right at Destro's heart as she spoke the next words with resounding clarity "The world that is deserved! Ashes! In prison I watched the entire world sit complacently awaiting its doom. A world which was content to allow the rest of the planet to disentagrate as long as they had their next twenty channels. Millions must die so that everyone may know that no matter where they are, that they are not safe! This is what we are fighting for,"  
  
Destro took a moment to put his steel fingers to his mask as he tried to follow the logic of something that would have made an appealing sort of sense to him a decade ago. Given the way the Decobray military aristocracy was raised before her kidnapping, Destro suspected this was all some need to make the world aware of the dangers of terrorism. Given he didn't want touch that sort of mental insecurity, much like his own, he simply backhanded her and grabbed at the weapon which fired several times into the air.  
  
"DESTRO! YOU TRAITOR!" The Baroness screamed as she slammed her head against Destros which was a mistake to prove she wasn't operating in her right mind. Cutting her air off with a headlock a few moments later, the weary Baroness slipped into unconciousness as Destro stared at his digital watch. There was just enough time to get onboard one of the escape capsules and lower himself to some place far below on the planet Earth. Whether Cobra Commander won or not was immaterial, he would never find either him or the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with.  
  
Whether she wished it or not.  
  
***  
  
Cobra General had dispersed the Crimson Guard throughout the station to check every nook, cranny, and otherwise place that he knew that the Lady Scarlet would not hide. Psychologically one could learn a great deal about a person from the way they did battle and the people that they cared for. Scarlet would go directly to the G.I. Joe prisoners, followed by the politicians, then she would go directly to the main power generator. The chief of Cobra's now defunct military intended to head her off there and see what fate would decide to be the end of their particular romance. A measure of pity crossed his darkened heart that she was chosen to care for him. Had she been with any other being on Earth from the strong men of her team to the fool that had married her yet had let the snowflake melt through his fingers.... he had considered having that man killed for the crime.  
  
"And yet do I contain the capacity to give any more than I have been given or do I merely entertain the possibility that something is better than me?" The General wasn't entirely without a sense of irony and recognized that if this were a drama that now would be the time, staring into the huge piles of boiling liquid spent coolent from the middle of a catwalk across it, that someone would appear in order to confront him with his sins.  
  
"Can the Shakespeare John, they hate that in Hell," Fallen Angel emerged from the other side of the walkway. She was as beautiful as she was deadly which was something she was extremely.  
  
"Your timing is impeccable," Cobra General smiled a almost Chesire grin.  
  
"My place is to merely gaurantee the Cobra Commander's success. You can no longer be trusted with the security of our imminent victory," Fallen Angel said as she kept the gun trained on his chest even as it shook visibly.  
  
"I shouldn't need to remind you that this imminent victory would not be possible if it weren't for the wars I've won in Cobra's name. The thousands of troops that I worked to instill fanatical loyalty in while providing them with the SKILLS that they needed to survive. YET YOU DA..." Jonathan could barely contain himself and nearly tore into her like a rapid wolf. Destro, Bludd, The Baroness, Storm Shadow, the Twins, his own father ALL betrayed Cobra at various times in their life and had been forgiven to carry on their battle! Was his treason so different?! He had given everything to a cause he didn't believe in and this was how they repaid him!?  
  
"SILENCE!" Fallen Angel screamed and walked forward with the gun aimed at his skull now. "We were to watch the world burn together for the things it had done to us! Whatever emerged from the ashes was going to be shaped by us and even if nothing did it was still righteous! Yet you've lied to us the entire way! Twenty thousand soldiers and more lie dead on the ground of the Earth and all you can think about is how dearly you want to be with your G.I. Joe woman!" Fallen Angel hissed bitterly as her eyes flashed in anger at the crumbling ideals of her life.  
  
"Very well then, if you want all that I have to give. Take it!" Cobra General ripped open his shirt and left his heart exposed. "You wish to know whether I would rather be a one of the Enemy, then let me tell you YES I would. I tried to make Cobra my own but, alchemy aside, it is impossible to turn lead into gold. Twenty thousand Cobra soldiers may dead but I bet it was WORTH IT to those people who killed them, no matter how titanic the losses must have been, to see monsters like us put to death. I may be destined for the lowest pit of Hell reserved for traitors chewed in Lucifer's mouth but it is only moderately worse than yours who would condemn me for trying to rise above what you embraced openly!" The former leader of Cobra tossed his weapon over the side of the railing even as a finger pulled on it's trigger and a head was struck squarely with a laser bolt.  
  
The General opened one of his serpentine eyes and looked down at the crumbled leader of the Crimson Guard on the ground.  
  
"Jesus Boss. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find you in this place?" Iceheart said as the woman sheathed her smoking pistol.  
  
"You shouldn't have done that," Cobra General knelt down and picked the woman who was his lover up off the ground and then dropped her into the pit below. The destruction of the station would be a fitting pyre for a woman who wished to consume the world and so desperately had not wanted to be alone during it.  
  
"Yeah and just let Blonde shoot you dead while it happens. Not happening CG," Iceheart shrugged as she looked distinctly uncomfortable next to the man and pulled out some of her trading cards to play with, it was a most unfortunately inappropriate habit.  
  
"How much of our conversation did you hear?" Jonathan asked as he looked to the Black Asp operative. She was the absolute finest that Cobra had ever produced with such a youthful brilliance that she had managed to infiltrate the army perfectly as a spy til she was chosen for the most important of all assignments. Yet he had never been sure just exactly where her loyalties lied. It may in fact be that she was preparing to turn him directly over to his father for the worst crime of all, betrayal of his madness.  
  
"Pretty much all of it. Thankfully I'm just in it for the money," Iceheart said as she began trotting toward the generators.  
  
"You know for a woman of your intelligence, there are easier and more profitable ways to make money than mass murder," Cobra General said as he jogged behind her towards the most powerful power plant the world had ever known.  
  
"Ya but I have too much morality for dot-coms." Iceheart said with a shrug.  
  
***  
  
The Great Wall of China   
  
Five minutes later  
  
Cover Girl flipped through her fashion catalog as she peered out of the top of her tank to take a look at the remains of the Chinese Cobra partisian army. General Hawk had made her a full Colonel which had to be the largest promotion she'd ever seen in her life, not that it wasn't deserved, in order to lead an allied assault on the fortress of the ex-communists who wanted to land themselves a few nuclear missles. They wanted to make sure that it was them on top of the heap that the new wacko who was running the show in space finished turning everything to ashes.  
  
"Hey Private! How many enemy were there?" Courtney had to ask, she wasn't keeping score or anything like that. However there was a cold feeling of security in knowing just how many of the enemy that were no longer out there to try and kill you. Looking back on that particular train of thought made her wonder if she actually was crazy or just a very good soldier.  
  
"46 tanks maam! Anti-aircraft artillery and air support reports that six of the enemy were shot down!" Private whatshisname said. It was really sad she couldn't remember the guys blasted handle. She was usually very good at this but there was plenty of other stuff on her mind other than the average soldier in this airforce base.  
  
CG didn't particularly like the results of this fight which had been a rather nonstop barrage of artillery fire defending the missile defense force from the thieves. The ex-model knew should probably be thankful that the big hunk with black eyes and James Earl Jones's voice vaporized the majority of the country's nuclear arsenal but she couldn't bring herself to be grateful to the man who was potentially going to kill half the United States population. Cover Girl's own daughter was a beautiful ten year old whisp of a thing that, bless her heart, wanted to be a G.I. Joe after she was a model too. Courtney's daughter was in Kentucky so she shouldn't be in any danger from the weapon should it land but that was like saying getting shot in the face was easier than dying from AIDs.  
  
"Good! And don't call me ma'am!" Cover Girl shouted as she sat back down in her tank. For crying out loud it wasn't like she was middle aged or anything, she was just approaching the age that most people turned middle age at.  
  
"Yes ma'am!" The private shouted and the Colonel wished she could demote him.  
  
There were few places that Cover Girl felt more at home in than her armor. Cover Girl had always been trained to be a model by her mother and hated it as often as she enjoyed the girlish things but as a girl she had always admired Joan of Arc more than Audrey Hepburn. There was still a photo of her father and her when she'd absolutely blown a Little Miss pagent because she'd gone to play swords with the neighborhood boys. Admittadly todays suits of platemail were a looser fit but they were no less beautiful for it.  
  
'God I wish Dusty were here....' Cover Girl didn't particularly feel like leadership material, despite being good at her job. After leaving the military Dusty had gone on to become a full time mechanic and she did consultant work for the very tank that she was now driving. She'd been happier at the Pitt more than she'd been anywhere else in her life prior but now she'd grown beyond war and didn't want to go back to it. The Colonel supposed that was the purpose of being in the force, to make sure that no one else had to suffer the consequences thereof.  
  
"Colonel Tadur? We've got an odd message for you..." the communications system on her Krieger-4 crackled to life. It had been the honor of the company to name the tank after her and all she needed was to get it painted pink and it would be perfect for her garage.  
"Who is it?" Cover Girl asked.  
"Well....it seems to be a shuttle that wants to land in our airstrip. They're saying they have the entire leadership of the world onboard and G.I. Joe team members,"   
-Charlemagne 


	15. A price filled Victory

Chapter 15  
New York City  
8 Minutes to Detonation of Jupiter's Thunder  
In some places the chaos was defening with men and women wailing in each other's arms, men taking the time to settle old scores, panic in the streets to try and desperately escape the blast zone. On the shores of the bay though before the Statue of Liberty, though, there was a scene of remarkable tranquility. Tens of thousands of New York City residents gathered before Lady Liberty and stared at her in order to gather some solace before the comming onslaught of darkness. The gigantic space station was visible now with the huge trail of flame filling the air like a comet in the middle of a bright day.  
"Evil is not the equal of the good...." A Muslim Iman said to his congregation in their time of greatest need.  
"And I saw the Beast, and the Kings of the Earth, and their armies, gathered to make war against him that sat on the throne and against his army..." The Baptist minister read the words of a dark time which would be the fufillment of a promise of deliverance.  
"Oh that you would burst forth from the skuies and come down! How that mountains would quake in your presence! The consuming fire of your glory would burn down the forests and boil the oceans dry. The nations would tremble before you then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame..." A Jewish Rabbi spoke words of wisdom to his students.  
Even a group of visiting tourists from India spoke the story of the greatest of all epics where the avatar of a god came forth in mortal form to slay the greatest of all threats to animal and god.  
The children of Lady Jaye, Flint, and Scarlet had oddly enough chosen like so many other citizens to gather here for the eleventh hour that would determine the future of the Earth. The small ones could not be expected to understand truly what it was they were possibly going to lose in the bright meteor that would cleanse life free from the Atlantic coast.  
Marissa thought the sight was rather pretty in a sort of grizzly way, like Haley's comet which she'd not gotten to see and likely never would save on video-tape. She wondered whether or not death would hurt when it struck and whether or not her parents were alright. The idea of what would happen to her country beyond her family was a bit much for her young mind to fully wrap itself around.  
Conrad on the other hand was acutely conscious of what was happening to his country and the fact that he was personally in danger hardly registered to him. It was an abomination to a mind that had never truly faced evil that Cobra, the bad guys, might win in the end. The thought of his mother was not something very strong either because he knew that she would be okay no matter what, even if she lost his brother and he.  
Dashiel was something of a mixture of emotions as the sight of the flying comet of a space station made him sick to his stomach. The young son of Scarlet was the most concerned with his own impending death and the thought of his mother who was likely out there away from him. It was he who also knew that many others would suffer in the attack and prayed with all of his heart that a miracle would occur.  
It was a wish that the universe was willing to grant, though not in the way he expected.  
***  
Shareware had an exceptionally difficult time navigating the halls of Cobra Command base, he might have been able to do it easier with his IQ of 2000 or so were it not for the fact that the Computer systems were down thanks to this stupid self destruct thing that had co-opted all the good link-ups. Without the mind boggingly infinite nature of the internet to occupy his vast intellectual resources the boredom was nearly enough to make every step crippling. He had elevated it somewhat by composing a book about the nature of nuclear tactics and searching through his memories to spot every possible piece of subtext in the Xena series but it was still not helping. A short attention span when you had the brain the size of a planet was just something that happened sadly, even figuring out which Mythological Goddesses his boss would sleep with hadn't occupied his time very long. Besides he knew everyone had their bizzare fetishes.  
"Salvation! DSL!" Shareware shouted as he came across a door which would lead to one of the escape shuttles with computers functioning directly beyond the level of mere mortal link up.  
"Sorry but this shuttle is taken!" A voice rang out which was accompanied by none other than Cobra Commander who ran into the door and immediately shut the airlock behind him.  
Shareware blinked as he came up to the edge of the airlock and kicked it. The ridiculousness of this situation was actually enough to distract the living super-computer from his monumental nausea boredom for a moment, but only a moment. "Cobra Commander this is ridiculous. Surely you don't intend to abandon me on this station which is about to be blown to smithereens?"  
"Actually, on the contrary. That was exactly what I intended to do," Cobra Commander's voice echoed from within the shuttle.  
Shareware winced as he thought about this, it was obviously one of the downsides of serving a warlord who had absolutely no concept of honor whatsoever. It was he supposed a trade off for the statistical fact that men who were willing to break alliances whenever necessary were a full whopping 1.4% across history more likely to conquer their enemies. He probably should have calculated his even more whopping 8% chance to mess over their employees. "But, Mighty Cobra Commander think of this. I know all of Cobra's secret bank account numbers, its design plans, and weapon stockpiles across the world!"  
"Which just means you're a security threat," Cobra Commander said menacingly, which was really all he had.  
Shareware really hated the original commander of Cobra he realized rather tersely. The man was so amazingly paranoid he was likely to abandon the chances to make sure he knew where all the hidden wealth of Cobra was as opposed to the certain chance that Shareware did. He calculated in his head what was most likely to work here and came up with a viable alternative for his time limitations. "Cobra Commander do you know how to fly this particular type of shuttle?"  
"Maybe," Cobra Commander said reluctantly. "I was under the impression that one could simply use an autopilot."  
"Well one can..." Shareware said before Cobra Commander interrupted.  
"Thank you very much. Goodbye." Cobra Commander waved as he dissapeared through the airlock and the shuttle a few minutes later ejected out the side.  
"Ha," Shareware muttered sitting down, calculating that the 99.9% chance of his death now was just as good in it's .1% standing there than trying to find another way off. He decided to play computer games instead, perhaps in the last minutes of his life he could beat his previous Resident Evil record.  
***  
5 minutes to detonation  
Jonathan Sharp had never really imagined that he would spend perhaps what would amount to the last minutes of his life trying to disarm the pen-ultimate product of his life. In retrospect he should have realized this was usually what human beings tended to do with the later part of their existences if they had time to reflect. It was a pity in his personal opinion that he had never been trained in more advanced technological practices since that inhibited his ability to defuse the situation considerably.  
  
"You're aware I hope that the reactor is well past the point of being shut down or ejected safely. At this current rate even if we detonated it now it would contaminate most of the Eastern Seaboard with incurable radiation poisoning," Iceheart said as she unfortunately could do little more than tell Jonathan how much he was not being effective.  
"Thank you Iceheart, but given that neither of us are in any position to escape even were I to wish for my own personal reasons to die doing something wortwhile, I might as well continue trying vainly to re-route the command systems. Curse myself for building such a thorough security system," Cobra General muttered even as he heard the sound of the laser pistol being cocked behind him even as Iceheart was throat chopped and fell to the ground at Scarlet's hands.  
"Let it never be spoken that in the darkest hours of the night there are not brief flashes of light....which blind when they should not illuminate," Jonathan spoke as he could feel the energy pistol at his throat and found he did not care.  
Snake Eyes he could tell very much wanted to kill him for what was no doubt any number of crimes comitted against what he believed in. He would gladly kill him for the five hundred thousand people estimated to have already died in the "Starfire Rebellion" as the news agencies were already calling it before discovery of the likelihood of their victory, the death of G.I. Joe members in their numerous engagements, and not the least of which was his unholy love for Scarlet.  
"Given your here and your not escaping, I suppose your trying to disarm this thing," Scarlet said with a cold professionality that showed no trace of the feelings she felt. They had both chosen duty over their feelings in their lifetimes, unlike he Jonathan supposed she would not regret it.  
"Yes, though it is presently beyond my ability. I was locked out of my security codes by a treacherous underling and as such we have approximately four and a half minutes until our doom," Jonathan said with a defeated sigh, a tone he had never taken before.  
"It is possible to move the station?" Scarlet said with a short look.  
Jonathan closed his eyes as he realized it was so utterly simple that it had utterly eluded his mindset. While he did not have the clearence to override his father's command on shutting down the self destruct system, he did not lack the clearence to change the movement of the space station itself. He did not say a word as Snake Eyes followed him with his pistol, any false motion leading to his being shot mercilessly. Pushing all the rockets to overdrive he knew he'd burn out the engines and lead to an overload within ten minutes. As one could imagine, this was not an overly pressing concern.  
The explosion of the station upwards shuddered as he did not know whether or not the speed they would be travelling would be enough to spare the land below them the mindless screaming death that was Jupiter's Thunder's overload. There was a 23% chance that it would detonate harmlessly in the atmosphere with another 50% that fill the seaboard with a meteor shower that would kill thousands but was far better than the hundred million destined to die with his father's kamikaze attack. He didn't want to think about the remaining 27% chance the rockets would fail early and accomplish nothing. Jonathan hardly noticed when Snake Eyes was shot in the hand by Iceheart whose pistol moved to kill Scarlet but was dead a moment later. Iceheart had been genetically enhanced like Jonathan and as such, only he had been fast enough to shoot her in the skull.  
"I have betrayed the last of my beliefs in the honor of war," were the last words of Cobra General and even Jonathan Sharp. Both were lies that he had crafted to make him believe that there was something other than suffering in all this. He dropped the weapon on the ground next to his loyal soldier and said "Whatever is left of Cobra I surrender."  
He felt annoyingly like Lucifer on the Final Nights.  
***  
0 minutes til destruction  
Cobra command station detonated it's awesome explosive power well above the Earth's atmosphere in a heat blast which was visible from New York to Europe as the planet was covered in tiny sparkles that served as fireworks for the victory over the most terrifying plot of the darkness yet. With their ground forces decimated at Area 51, their super weapon destroyed, news of the surrender of the leader who had galvanized thousands of age old hatreds under the banner of a New order free of them, .the world's leaders safely returned or held in captivity for their own warcrimes....the Starfire Rebellion collapsed. The majority of rebels surrendered while others simply dissapeared back into the woodwork with their dreams of power or freedom from enemies real and imagined shattered.   
Though Cobra Commander would never be found and brought to justice for his crimes, he would spend the rest of his near-immortal lifespan a defeated figure. Living long enough to see the triumph in truth of every ideal he despised. 


End file.
